Sins (42 page)

‘Max,’ Emerald persisted angrily, ‘I’m trying to talk to you about St-Tropez.’

He reached across the table, and grabbed her arm. ‘Now
look
.’

‘Max, you’re hurting me,’ Emerald protested.

‘Good. There’ll be some more where that came from if you don’t put a sock in it.’

Emerald glared at him. ‘Let go of me. I’m not putting up with you talking to me like that, Max. I’m not some tarty little showgirl you’ve picked up in some dive.’

‘Oh, aren’t you? Well, let me tell you something, darlin’, as far as I’m concerned you’re just another pair of tits and a cunt, and you’d better remember that in future.’

He released her so forcefully that she fell back against her chair, staring at him in shocked disbelief as he stood up.

‘Max…’ Emerald faltered as she realised that he was leaving. But it was too late, he was already pushing his way past the dancers, and to go after him would only draw attention. Besides, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of that. She reached for her gin and tonic, and then had to put it down again when she realised that her hand was trembling. No one had ever used that kind of language to her before, or shown her so much anger. She pushed back her own chair and stood up. She certainly wasn’t going to sit here and wait for him to come back. Emerald just wasn’t that type of woman.

Rose knew something was wrong the minute she woke up. Initially she froze, her mind racing with fear and her heart jumping, as images and memories from the previous evening flashed through her head.

Cautiously she looked around her, her heart thudding even more frantically as the back of a man’s head came into view. He was snoring slightly, obviously still asleep. On the floor beyond the bed she could see her precious yellow dress lying in a crumpled heap. She was naked beneath the bedclothes, and when she tried to move, her body reacted with a feeling she recognised from the night she had spent with Josh.

She had had sex with the man lying asleep next to her, and if her body was to be believed, not just the once.

Confusing images were jostling for space inside her head: the moon; a lawn seen close up, as though she’d been lying on it; fevered, excited hands touching bare flesh–her own hands on a male body; candles lit all around the bed shedding a soft yellow glow and smelling of incense and something darker and more sensual; her own body naked on the bed, her arms and legs spread
wide in eagerness, male hands making an exploration of her flesh, mapping her body…

Another image, this time of him painting her skin, wetting the brush with his tongue and then scrubbing it into the paint before he transferred it to her body, slowly and carefully creating a snake curling down between her breasts and over her belly, its head her sex.

She could remember him showing her what he’d done, holding up a mirror so that she could see. She’d thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful, and when he’d told her to stroke the snake she’d complied, moved to tears by her own sense of the intensity and beauty of the moment.

They’d talked to the snake for a long time, a deeply earnest conversation, which, had she remembered, made her feel as though the true secrets of the universe had been revealed to her. The images pushing into her head showed everything in slow motion.

Hadn’t there been a discussion about the snake needing to be fed? Rose shuddered, but it was too late to stop the images: Pete’s face lifted to the night sky; Pete lying on the lawn, his throat arched as though in sacrifice as she crouched over him and his tongue had slid wetly between the snake’s open jaws.

They had said that they had found the key to the garden of Eden, and they had marvelled joyously at the sheer clarity and enhancement of every sense they possessed, so that suddenly a mere finger touch was enough to bring them to emotional ecstasy whilst physically their bodies broke through their human capacity for pleasure. They had, they agreed, become superhuman, a god and goddess
empowered and created to convey love and beauty to the rest of the human race, absorbed in the wonder of their shared images and the purity of their heightened awareness.

This was awful, dreadful, Rose thought now. How could she have been a party to this? She was shaking with shock.

Somehow she managed to get out of the bed and gather up her abandoned clothes and her bag without waking Pete.

In the bathroom she rubbed some toothpaste from the half-empty tube she’d found over her teeth, and washed the smeared paint off her body with cold water, before dressing quickly in her crumpled silk dress, and the knickers she had worn the previous day.

Her hair stank of the patchouli-scented candles; all she wanted was to get home and forget everything that had happened. It was nearly midday. The empty house smelled of dust and decay as she made her way downstairs and outside into the sunshine and her waiting Mini.

Janey smiled happily to herself as she watched the pretty girls flocking round the rails displaying the latest consignment of new clothes. They’d arrived on Monday but she’d held them back until now, knowing that she’d have far more potential customers coming in on a Saturday and knowing too how much King’s Road girls liked to be the first with a new design.

The salesgirls, virtually indistinguishable from the customers in their pretty short Janey F dresses, were hurrying to and from the communal changing room,
answering the pleas of their customers. The inside of the shop was faintly murky, huge yellow buttercups painted on its damson-coloured walls. Buttercups were Janey’s trademark; all her clothes had one somewhere. The latest records were playing loudly, competing with the excited chatter of her customers, splashes of sunshine from the open door and the window tingeing the shop’s darkness with an exotic touch of gold. The smell of incense, which was dispensed from a ceiling-hung incense burner she’d bought from a friend who’d brought it back from Marrakesh, mingled with the sharper smell of youthful perfume, warm fabric and excited anticipation.

A strikingly pretty girl, flat-chested and tall, her huge dark eyes emphasised with kohl and false eyelashes, swept into the shop. She was wearing an Ossie Clark dress of cream chiffon with a purple floral print, and she homed straight in on Janey’s latest delivery, taking from the rails a dress of soft white with a print of scattered meadow flowers on it. She was a well-known model, and Janey held her breath in hope and then released it in happy pleasure when she saw her take the dress to the till, and mentally made a note to reorder plenty of it. It would be in hot demand now. Janey loved her clothes with passionate intensity; they were her creation, a part of her. She lived with them for so long when she was designing them that the end of their short lives at the change of season filled her with a melancholy that could only be banished by working on something new.

She looked at her watch, realising guiltily that it was one o’clock and she’d promised to meet Charlie for lunch at twelve thirty. She was just about to tell one of the girls
that she was slipping out when the shop door was pushed open with so much force that it banged into the old-fashioned hat stand they’d decorated as a scarecrow, and on which they hung the bargain buys mixed up with the new clothes.

Janey hadn’t gone as far as shops like Hung on You and Granny Takes a Trip, in making visiting her shop an experience that went beyond the mere buying of clothes, but she was proud of Dylan, the scarecrow, and she turned immediately to give the person who’d treated him with such a lack of respect a frown.

He wasn’t the kind of person who normally came into her shop, being middle-aged, portly, and perspiring in a suit as shiny as his bald head, but before she could say anything to him he told her sharply, ‘I want to see the boss. Where is she?’

His voice had an East End tinge to it, and he was sweating so heavily he had to remove a handkerchief from his pocket and mop his face.

‘I am the boss,’ Janey responded, drawing herself up to her full height and then asking pointedly in her most cut-glass accent, ‘And I don’t believe I know you.’

He gave a snort of derision and came closer to her, jabbing a pudgy forefinger so close to her that he was almost touching her collarbone.

‘Well, you should do if you are the boss, although you certainly aren’t the girl I saw the last time I came in here. American, she was.’

‘You must mean my partner, Cindy,’ Janey guessed.

‘Partner schmartner,’ he retaliated, in a way that at any other time would have made Janey smile, but any
thoughts she had had of smiling were banished when he continued angrily, ‘Them are my goods you’ve got hanging up there on them rails, my goods wot haven’t been paid for.’

‘You’re one of our suppliers?’ Janey guessed.

That would explain why she hadn’t recognised him. Cindy had insisted that she take over dealing with all the orders and the manufacturers and suppliers, saying that it would leave Janey free to concentrate on being creative. Janey had been grateful to her for doing so.

‘One of the many fools you owe money to,’ he agreed grimly.

‘There must have been some mistake,’ Janey assured him confidently. She was feeling much more relaxed now that she knew why he was here. Obviously a payment to him had somehow or other been overlooked. It was easily done; she’d lived in fear of doing so herself until Cindy had taken over the accounts.

‘There’s no mistake,’ he assured her. ‘Not according to my bank. Have a look for yourself.’ He removed a letter from his pocket and shoved it under her nose.

His bank was stating that their cheque had been ‘referred to drawer’, although Janey couldn’t understand why.

Hers was a small business and she had always been careful not to overextend herself financially. Added to that, her clothes were becoming increasing popular and selling well, and the business had actually built up a rather nice surplus of cash.

‘Four times I’ve rung here and each time I’ve been fobbed off with some excuse or other. Well, now I’ve had enough.’

He opened the door and called out into the street, ‘Right, lads, come in and get it, and put it in the van.’

To Janey’s horror two burly young men marched into the shop.

‘It’s on that rail over there,’ he told them, indicating the rail that held the new delivery.

‘Oh, no, please, you can’t take them…’ Janey protested. She felt mortified, conscious of the attention the men were attracting from shoppers.

‘Oh yes I bloody well can.’

In desperation Janey pleaded with him, ‘Look, I’m sure there’s been a mistake.’

He would have to come in now, whilst Cindy was having a Saturday off and wasn’t there to deal with the situation. She had told Janey that she had to go and spend the weekend with an elderly second cousin of her mother’s who lived in the Home Counties somewhere.

‘There certainly has, and you’re the one who’s made it if you think I’m going to stand back and let you get away with not paying me.’

‘I’ll write you another cheque,’ Janey promised him, adding frantically when she saw the look on his face, ‘A personal one this time.’ She had no idea why the cheque hadn’t been honoured, and she wished desperately that Cindy was here to sort everything out.

‘And wot’s to stop that one being a dud, an’ all? No, thanks. Jed, them’s ours as well, over there in the corner.’

Janey gasped as one of the young men lumbered past her. She couldn’t let them take the dresses, there’d be no stock left.

‘Look, I’ll pay you in cash, all right? I’ll go to the bank
straight away and withdraw it, only please leave those dresses where they are.’ She was nearly in tears, fighting panic as well as shock now.

For a few seconds it looked as though he was going to refuse, but then grudgingly he agreed, ‘All right, but I’m coming with you, and these two are staying put, and so are them frocks.’

All too conscious of the whispers she could hear all around her, Janey somehow managed to walk out into the street although her legs had turned to jelly.

Her bank wasn’t very far away, although it was busy with young King’s Roaders drawing out money for the weekend, chattering happily about the fun they planned to have.

By the time it was her turn to go up to the window, Janey’s hands felt clammy.

‘I’ll pay you the amount of the returned cheque,’ she told the supplier, trying to sound as businesslike as she could, ‘but if there is any more money outstanding I shall need to see an invoice. There’s obviously been a mix-up somewhere along the line.’

She spoke to the waiting cashier, asking to see both the shop and her own personal statement. Her own account, she knew, would have a decent amount of cash in it as she had recently received a payment from her trust fund, but when she saw the shop statement her eyes widened in dismay. The account was overdrawn by nearly five hundred pounds! How on earth had that happened? Her knees had gone all shaky, she didn’t trust herself to ask any questions or demand any explanations. Instead she went to one of the cashiers and drew
out enough money from her own account to pay the supplier.

There was no point in her trying to telephone Cindy–she would have to wait until Monday to learn what was going on. It should have been impossible for the shop’s account to be overdrawn, but Cindy was bound to have an explanation, Janey comforted herself as she set out for the pub to meet Charlie.

Rose’s hands were sticky with perspiration as she clung to the steering wheel of the Mini, driving as though she had all the furies of hell chasing after her, taking corners at a speed she would never normally have contemplated in her frantic need to escape–not so much from Pete, as from the horrible reality of what she had done.

Her heart was jumping–from panic and remorse, or from the drug she had taken? Rose didn’t know which, nor did it really matter. The effect was the same, whatever the cause: a relentless, frighteningly heavy racing heartbeat, combined with a sweaty sickly feeling, and a pounding headache.

How could she have behaved like that? The drug might have lowered her resistance, removed her inhibitions, but surely it couldn’t have made her do what she had done, not unless there had been a part of her that had wanted to behave like that, not if somewhere deep down inside her there wasn’t something that meant that she was–what? A whore like her mother?