Sins (44 page)

Mrs Wright drew herself up to her full height and told Emerald indignantly, ‘No I didn’t, and there was no more calls,’ before marching past Emerald with her head held high. Her mother didn’t know how fortunate she was to have loyal hardworking staff, Emerald thought crossly after she had closed the door behind her daily. Mrs Wright was her third daily in as many years, whilst her mother still had the same cleaner coming in to clean the Walton Street shop and the Cheyne Walk house that she had had for as long as Emerald could remember.

So Max
hadn’t
telephoned. Well, that meant nothing other than that he was in one of his moods. He was bound to be at Annabel’s tonight. After all, it was Jeannie de la Salles’ birthday and they’d both accepted her invitation to join the small group of close friends with whom she and her husband were having dinner. Emerald intended to make sure that when Max saw her he’d want her so much that he’d regret the way he’d behaved and come running. Now, what was she going to wear? It would have to be something very special…

Janey was trying to concentrate on the pattern she was cutting for one of her new designs, but she simply couldn’t. She hadn’t seen Charlie for days, and she was missing him. She’d tried to telephone and leave a message via the call box telephone shared by everyone who lived
in the house where he rented his bedsit, but no one had replied.

She’d mentioned her longing to see him to Cindy, but for once Cindy hadn’t been as sympathetic as Janey had expected, telling her rather sharply that Charlie couldn’t be expected to hang around his bedsit waiting for Janey to call when he had his own career to think of.

Remembering that conversation now, Janey put down the chalk with which she had been marking out the pattern on the fabric spread all around her on her bedroom floor. She preferred to work like this on the first rough make-ups of her designs, cutting them out the way she had once cut out her dolls’ clothes and then sewing them on the small hand Singer sewing machine she had been given for her thirteenth birthday. Normally this private first stage of a new creation was one of the ones she enjoyed the most–seeing the fabric take shape as she worked on it, until it took on its own life form and excited and enchanted her with its possibilities. However, right now her heart wasn’t in it, because she was yearning for Charlie.

Emerald had deliberately timed her arrival at Annabel’s to ensure that Max would have had plenty of opportunity to worry that she wasn’t coming. She was wearing a new dress, one she’d bought in New York earlier in the year, a gold quilted Cellophane evening dress, sleeveless, with an embellished gilt collar. It was very short and had been inspired by sci-fi movies. Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy’s sister, had apparently bought the same dress. Jeannie’s birthday gift–her favourite scent, Guerlain’s
Shalimar–was wrapped in gold foil paper that matched Emerald’s dress.

Emerald’s arrival at Annabel’s caused exactly the reaction she had wanted: other women studying her with silent envy whilst their male escorts simply stared at her like little boys gawping at a forbidden treat as she was escorted to the table. One quick glance had assured her that Max was there, looking deliciously handsome and dangerous in his dinner suit. Ignoring him, Emerald went to Jeannie, kissing her friend’s cheek as she handed her her gift.

‘Oh, how lovely!’ Jeannie thanked her, adding mischievously, ‘You look positively gift-wrapped yourself. Now who, I wonder, do you intend such a luscious present for?’

Everyone laughed, including Emerald, who retaliated by giving Jeannie’s husband a deliberately provocative smile, saying, ‘Well, let me see. It’s Peter’s birthday soon, isn’t it?’

Jeannie laughed and tapped her wrist. ‘Naughty. As if I’d let you anywhere near by dear husband, especially looking like that. That dress is simply gorgeous, Emerald,’ she added as Emerald sat down next to Max, still ignoring him.

‘Do
you
like my dress, Max?’ she asked him once the conversation had moved on and she was able to talk privately to him. Adding provocatively, ‘You’d have thought at the price I had to pay for it that they’d have thrown in a matching pair of knickers. As it was, I’ve had to go without.’

‘That’s you all over, isn’t it, Emerald? Expensive
wrapping round something cheap. Where I come from the only kind of girls who don’t wear knickers are those on the game. They can earn more, see, when they don’t have to waste time getting them off.’

Emerald stared at him. This wasn’t the response she had expected at all. She knew she looked her best; the attention she had already attracted had proved that. By rights Max ought to be grovelling to her, telling her how sorry he was and how empty and long the last week had been for him without her.

She had to wait until the waiters had served the first course of asparagus with hollandaise sauce before she could lean towards him and warn him, ‘I don’t much like what you’re implying, Max.’

The look he gave was unapologetic and cold. ‘Is that so? Well, I don’t much care,’ he told her, mimicking her own manner.

The meal was almost over, coffee and brandy had been served, the men were smoking their cigars, and Max, who hadn’t spoken to Emerald since their exchange during the first course, was leaning back in his chair intently watching a pretty brunette at another table.

Emerald could see the curiosity and amusement in the eyes of some of the other people around the table, especially the women, as they too observed Max’s very obvious interest in the brunette. Emerald knew that she wasn’t exactly popular amongst her own sex and that there would be plenty of women watching what was happening now and secretly enjoying the prospect of seeing her humiliated.

A surge of righteous anger, mixed with a sense of injustice, filled her.

She had come here tonight with one purpose in mind and that had been to make up with Max, she told herself, conveniently forgetting that she had sworn that she would demand a grovelling apology from him first; she had dressed for him, concentrated her time and her attention on him, she had let the world,
her
world, those who were regulars here–the well born and the wealthy–know by her behaviour that she had given Max special privileges and this was how he repaid her.

Infuriated by his behaviour Emerald demanded sharply, ‘Someone you know?’

When Max turned to her, her heart missed a beat. There was a look in his eyes she had never seen before, cold and implacably hard…and…somehow actually threatening.

‘No one questions me,’ he told her acidly, ‘but most especially not a woman.’

‘It was the way you were looking at her,’ she protested, putting her hand on his arm, her eyes widening in humiliated shock when he roughly threw her arm away. She knew it would leave it bruised.

Had anyone else seen what had happened? Emerald’s pride wouldn’t allow her to be made a fool of in front of other people.

‘You’re supposed to be here with me,’ she reminded him in a hissed whisper, but he was still looking at the brunette. ‘Max?’ she protested unsteadily, but he was ignoring her, pushing back his chair and getting up, walking away from her–again.

Ignoring Jeannie’s curious entreaty, Emerald shook her head and, pausing only to grab her handbag, hurried after him, following him out into the street, in a growing mood of anger.

Outside, after the smoky semi-darkness of the club, the milky light of the long summer evening made her blink. Max was heading towards his E type car, which she could see parked several yards down the street. Emerald hurried after him, grabbing hold of his arm as she reached him and tugging furiously on the sleeve of his jacket as she demanded, ‘What do you think you’re doing walking out like that? How dare you behave like that to me? How dare you?’

‘Get out of my way.’

‘No. Not until you apologise to me for—’

‘For what?’ Max stopped her, demanding cruelly, ‘For giving you what you asked for, what you were begging for? You know what you are, don’t you?’ he said before Emerald could catch her breath to reply. ‘You’re a whore, a stupid dumb whore ready to open her legs to any man who asks.’

Something–not just shock or anger, but something deeper and far more hurtful–pierced through the armour of Emerald’s self-confidence. Like a trap door opening on some hidden inner secret, it was there in front of her, the ogre, the ghoul, the fear she kept locked inside herself. He was right. That’s all she was, however she dressed it up. Just like her father, a man who slept with women for money.

‘That’s not true.’ Panic shrilled her voice, her gasp of protest turning to an involuntary moan of pain when
Max hauled her between his own body and the car and pushed her back against it so hard that her back screamed in agony. For the first time the thought of his savage sexual possession wasn’t exciting at all. In fact it was loathsome, loathsome and frightening.

Emerald began to struggle. The force of the blow when Max hit her across the face had her head snapping back and tears of pain stinging her eyes.

Holding her shoulder with one hand, he gripped her hair with the other, forcing her head back so that she had to suffer the contemptuous look he was giving her.

‘You think you’re so much better than anyone else, but you aren’t. The only difference between you and the tarts out on the streets on the game is that they are clever enough to get paid for it. You might fool your fancy friends but you don’t fool me. Let me tell you something about yourself. Without that fancy accent of yours and the fancy title that goes with it, you’d be down in the gutter where you really belong, because you’re nothing.
Nothing
. And you and I both know it.’

‘No, that’s not true!’

‘Now you’re lying as well, and this is what you get for that.’

There wasn’t time for her to defend herself or even to scream out in protest as his fists thudded into her body over and over again, driving the breath from her lungs, leaving her gasping.

Frantically she pleaded with him to stop. ‘No, Max, please don’t, please stop…’

She could hear him laughing as he taunted her.

‘Why? You’re enjoying it really, aren’t you? Women
like you always do. It’s what you deserve.’ Each word was accompanied by another blow.

As little as she wanted what was happening to her to be witnessed by anyone else, Emerald looked desperately towards the club, hoping that someone would come to her rescue, but the street remained resolutely empty.

‘You won’t get away with this, Max,’ she warned him. ‘I shall report you to the police.’

To o late Emerald realised her mistake.

‘Oh, you will, will you?’ His voice was soft and yet so very sinister, lifting the hairs at the nape of her neck.

‘No…I won’t say anything, Max. Just let me go and we’ll forget the whole thing.’

‘Let you go? It will be my pleasure.’

Relief flooded through her. But instead of releasing her as she had expected, he punched her again. Harder this time, the force of the blow making her head snap back in an automatic recoil action that allowed Max to grab hold of her hair and bang her head back against the lamppost. Just in time Emerald managed to angle her neck so that the blow only caught the side of her head. The force of it had made her bite her own tongue and she could taste the blood. Her nose was bleeding as well, the blood dripping onto the pavement. Every bit of her body was screaming its agony of red-hot pain.

‘Max,’ she protested pleadingly.

‘You and I are going for a little ride together,’ he told her, ignoring her plea, kicking her savagely in the groin so that she collapsed against him.

He opened the car’s passenger door, and manhandled her into the seat. Emerald tried to push him away, but
he shook her violently, and then punched her so hard that she thought he must have broken her ribs. Her body contorted, leaving her gasping for air and filled with pain. She had to get away from him, but she could hardly breathe, never mind move. Still, though, she tried to break free, but Max wouldn’t let her go. Instead, his hand gripped her throat, exerting a bruising pressure on her windpipe. Choking and gasping, Emerald clawed at his arm, only to collapse when he hit the side of her face so hard with the flat of his hand, not once but twice, that the force of the blows knocked her out.

When she came round a few seconds later, Max was already driving them away from the club. She could taste fresh blood in her mouth, pain knifing through her face.

Now she really was afraid. Everyone knew about the efficiency with which the East End’s underworld gangs got rid of those they didn’t want around any more.

Max was driving down Sloane Street now. She had to get away from him. Where were the police when you needed them? Her head was aching, thumping horribly, the pain and dizziness making her feel sick. What was he going to do to her?

Rose got up from her desk. She’d worked later than she’d planned but now the light was fading and she was hungry. She’d kept the décor of her studio plain and simple, furnishing it with pieces from the newly opened Terence Conan store, Habitat, on Fulham Road.

She had just finished closing the windows when she saw the E type roaring down the King’s Road from Sloane Square. She gave an idle glance and then frowned
as she recognised Emerald sitting in the passenger seat, her disinterest changing to concern as someone stepped out to cross the road in front of the car, forcing the driver to stop with a squeal of brakes.

Having reassured herself that the pedestrian had made it safely to the other side of the road, Rose was about to turn away when she saw the passenger door being thrust open as the car started up again, and Emerald falling from the car onto the road. The E type pulled slightly into the kerb, and then started to reverse towards Emerald’s prone unmoving body. For several seconds Rose was too disbelieving, too horrified to do anything. Emerald would be killed if he reversed over her, surely he wasn’t actually going to, but then to her relief she saw that the car was moving forward again, and picking up speed, the driver obviously not intending to stop.

Rose rubbed her eyes. Had she merely imagined what she’d seen?