Elegance and Innocence (63 page)

It’s all wrong; some sort of mistake.

Jake promised.

I turn to Robbie.

She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘We need to find him.’

Mink Bikini is located underneath the arches in an alleyway behind Portobello Road. It looks like all the other car repair workshops and scrapyards, only the constant driving bass of the music and the wild dress code give the game away. It’s the kind of unmarked club that repels tourists and hen night parties; here, only the ultra cool are admitted; smoking and scoring in the shadows, well away from the light above the door.

Even though it’s still early, the party’s picking up speed. Robbie and I aren’t really outfitted for the scene. We’re stopped on the door by two enormous black bouncers, dressed in black leather bondage gear.

‘Are you on the list?’ one growls.

‘We’re the fluffers,’ Robbie grins, with her characteristic combination of profanity and charm. ‘We’ll be getting to work in a minute, if you want to watch.’

They smirk and let us by.

‘What are fluffers?’ I ask.

‘You don’t want to know,’ she assures me. ‘But let’s move quickly, OK?’

It’s almost pitch-black inside. But the bar is lit by electric-blue tubes under glass, the stage is bathed in an indigo glow. The dance floor’s crowded with beautiful people. A searchlight swings in all directions; famous faces appear for a second, then disappear, the music’s brutal and sharp, layers of relentless sound. In front of us now, an exquisite young girl with long auburn hair and ivory skin, wearing nothing but a scrap of silk, like a nappy, is passing around shots of a blue liquid, served in plastic baby bottles. Everyone’s swaying, sucking, screaming to be heard.

I turn to Robbie. ‘We’ll never find him; I can hardly see.’

‘Stay close,’ she instructs, pulling me through the crowd.

She stops just to the right of the stage, where another couple of bouncers are waiting; more soberly dressed this time in black jeans and T-shirts. One of them steps up as we approach.

‘We have a delivery,’ Robbie shouts over the music. ‘We’re expected.’

He looks us over. Our faces are blank, impassive.

Then he pushes the door behind him open. We walk through a long, cold cement corridor, smelling of damp, packed with rigging and sound equipment. The door slams
shut. There are voices, echoing, somewhere down the hall. Above them all, I recognize Jasmine’s razor-sharp laugh.

‘I can’t do this,’ I tell Robbie.

She grabs my hand. ‘We have to.’

The dressing room’s full of men; middle-aged men in suits, younger men in jeans, lounging on sofas, leaning against the water cooler, all staring. Jasmine and her band are holding court. She’s wearing a see-through, skin-tight plastic jumpsuit, with a flesh-coloured thong and black gaffing tape over her nipples, à la Wendy O. Williams. She leans back, legs spread wide, smoking a spliff.

She looks up, sees us in the doorway. ‘Ohh! Look what the cat dragged in! How nice of you to come!’ she purrs. Her hair’s bleached and shorn, her eyes bloodshot and swollen; heavily outlined in layers of black eyeliner. It hardly matters; no one’s looking at her face. ‘Have you come to congratulate me?’

I swallow hard. ‘Actually, I’m looking for Jake.’

‘A lost husband!’ She inhales again, turning to face her audience of admirers. ‘Seems I’m collecting them tonight!’

They laugh.

I’m the floor show.

Robbie squeezes my hand.

‘Are you two together?’ Jasmine waves her joint at us. ‘Now, even I might pay to see that.’

More sniggering.

‘Is he here?’ I say quietly.

She turns, admiring her reflection in the mirror. Narrowing her eyes, she picks up the black eyeliner. ‘Why don’t you have a look for yourself?’ She nods to the bathroom door.

I walk over to the battered metal door and turn the knob.

The first thing I notice is the smell, a burning sickly sweet odour, stronger than the stench of urine. It’s darker than the dressing room; the only light comes from a flickering bulb above the mirror. As my eyes adjust, I make out two shapes. Jake’s leaning against the sink, holding his arm out. Smith’s concentrating, filling the needle …

Jake looks up.

His expression is more disappointed than surprised. ‘It’s from LA, baby.’ His voice is hoarse. ‘Once in a lifetime stuff. We’ll make a fortune … an absolute fortune …’

Smith doesn’t even pause. He moves swiftly, jamming the needle in. Jake closes his eyes and exhales.

I shut the door.

Jasmine licks her lips. Her skin’s flushed and sweaty under the plastic. ‘Did you get what you came for?’ She looks in my direction but her eyes fail to focus.

I walk away, Robbie trailing after me.

The warm night air is close and humid. I watch Robbie smoking her cigarette, pacing up and down between the chimney pots. I’m sitting, dangling my legs over the side of the roof.

It’s not such a long way down. Just a couple of floors.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ She throws her cigarette away. ‘Come on, Evie.’

There’s a little square of pavement between my feet, just a few dozen yards below. ‘Where?’

‘Come on. Get up.’

I look at her, in her misshapen green jumper. ‘I don’t think I can.’ I stare down at the pavement again.

‘That’s why I’m here.’ She pulls me back from the edge. ‘Let’s go.’

Standing on the street corner, bags in tow, she waves down a black cab. ‘Take us to the hotel where Oscar Wilde was arrested, please.’

‘You mean the Cadogan Hotel.’ The man smiles. ‘There’s a poem about that somewhere!’

‘Typical,’ she sighs.

We climb in.

‘We’re going to sleep in a proper bed, have a delicious meal and drink champagne in the bath,’ she promises.

‘There’s no way we can pay for it,’ I object.

‘Yeah, but we’re fucked, you and I. So we might as well have a party, OK?’

I should argue with her. I should protest and make the taxi pull over. But instead I lean back in the seat and roll down the window.

Maybe she has a point.

It’s another London that whisks by; a London of green
garden squares and red-brick mansions; of boutique shops and designer clothes; a clean, polite, well-spoken London, with a boarding-school education and tickets for Glyndebourne.

I linger in the corner of the lobby while Robbie speaks to the clerk at the reception desk. She takes out a credit card and her passport, pushing them across the counter with great confidence. And we’re led to a suite with views over Cadogan Square.

It’s so beautiful. No dust or filth or piles of clutter; it’s untainted, orderly; immaculate. There’s the cavernous marble bathroom with the claw-and-ball-feet bath, the tiny bottles of hand cream and scented shampoo, piles of thick, white, oversized towels; here’s the carved mahogany bedstead, high ceilings, tall, narrow, infinitely refined French windows. Robbie opens them. Summer rushes in on a single breath, filling the room. It’s not the summer I know – stale air and sweat – but the perfume of honeysuckle, clean sheets and freshly mown grass from the square below.

Robbie goes into the bathroom to turn on the bath. I sit on the corner of the bed, my hands underneath my thighs.

I want to weep. But all my tears have gone.

‘Look, darling.’ Robbie’s back, holding the thick room service menu, page after page of elaborate entrées. ‘Look at all the wonderful things we can have!’

She orders champagne, a pot of Earl Grey tea, hamburgers with extra chips and tiny English strawberries and vanilla ice cream. I haven’t the heart to tell her I’ve lost my appetite.

I sit, immersed in the warm, scented water.

Her handbag’s collapsed on top of the toilet seat, the hotel receipt poking out of the top. Shaking the water off my fingers, I reach down to have a look. But when I pull it out, a slim vial of pills rolls out onto the floor.

‘Lithium’ the inscription reads, ‘to be taken twice a day’. And there are more. Inderal. Prozac. These are real prescription pills, not recreational ones.

‘I’m running you a bath too,’ I say, when I come out, wrapped in one of the fluffy white robes. ‘Do you want me to sit with you?’

‘No.’ She turns away. ‘I won’t be long.’

True to her word, she appears shortly after, a vision of Victorian modesty in a long-sleeved floaty white nightgown; the kind of thing Imo used to wear. We lie, side by side, my dark head on one pillow, her fair curls on the other.

‘Come to New York, Evie. We can have the baby, you and I.’

I’m so tired; my eyes ache. ‘Let’s not talk about it now.’

‘I’d love to have you back again – we’d have such adventures.’

‘What are those pills?’

‘Just pills.’ She rolls onto her back, eyes closed. ‘Sometimes the water gets too high.’

‘What do you mean?’

She looks like a statue; like one of those monuments laid out in St Paul’s.

‘Virginia Woolf drowned herself in a river … It’s nothing. I had a rough patch. I hate them; they make everything … flat.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I touch her hand. Her skin’s cool and dry. ‘I’m so selfish.’

She opens her eyes again and smiles. ‘Actually, it’s nice to be the one with the answers for a change.’

At home, on the outskirts of Islington, you can always hear the grumble of some domestic disharmony brewing in the background of the night. But here in Knightsbridge, the linen sheets are cool and crisp against our skin, the bed firm yet yielding; every intimate comfort met as if it were our birthright. Even the traffic outside is unhurried, quiet.

Around five, I wake to birdsong. The air’s unexpectedly fresh. It must’ve rained in the night. Robbie lies motionless beside me, curled into a half-moon round her pillow, as if it were a lover she won’t let go of. The sleeve of her nightgown has rolled up around her elbow in the night.

Carefully, silently, I pull the sheet over her again.

Lying back, I gaze at the golden glow of sunlight as it takes possession of the morning sky. And holding out my
arms, I imagine the weight of a small, warm body pressed against my chest.

Alex is skipping across the room, holding on to Piotr’s hand, taking five rubber ball steps for Piotr’s one, dragging a signature green bag along the floor. Every fibre of his being is electric; it’s like watching a firefly bobbing in the night sky, illuminating everything around him.

A familiar, almost painful sensation burns across my chest; pure love. Still wearing his Thomas the Tank Engine pyjama top, the one he won’t be parted from, with his unruly hair that can’t be tamed, no matter how hard I try, his dimpled cheeks and fearless, unrelenting immediacy, my son is a force of nature: raw, potent and miraculous to behold.

Letting go of Piotr’s hand, he barrels into the Boodle and Dunthorne showroom, throwing himself onto me.

‘We got
everything
!’ He laughs, burying his face in my lap.

I quickly kiss the top of his head before he squirms away, desperate to touch as many jewels as he can before the assistant ferries them to safer ground.

‘So.’ Piotr grins, carrying two bulging bags of his own. ‘Which one will you have?’

He leans casually against the counter, completely untroubled by our deception.

I can’t resist the temptation to ruffle his unflappable exterior. I pluck the largest of the solitaire rings from the tray and smile sweetly. ‘I like this one.’

Bunny coughs.

But he just smiles back. ‘Put it on,’ he suggests.

Slipping it over my finger, I hold up my hand. ‘What do you think?’

The assistant has gone rigid with anticipation.

‘Mummy, are you buying that?’ Alex pulls at my arm to have a closer look. ‘Are you?’

Piotr looks at me.

I look at him.

He’s enjoying this; I can tell by the glow in his eyes, the soft curve of his lips.

‘What do you think?’ I ask again, as calmly as if we were discussing what sandwich to have for lunch.

Bunny drains her glass and stands up. ‘Would you look at the time! We really must make a move!’

But Piotr holds his ground. ‘I think you can have anything you want,’ he says and, turning to the assistant, he digs out his wallet. ‘I sincerely hope it comes in a velvet box?’

‘Mummy?’

My face is flushing; it’s all I can do keep from laughing out loud.

‘Oh yes! Certainly, sir!’

I slip the ring off, put it back on the tray.

‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind.’ And taking Alex’s
hand, I stand up. ‘It’s not really what I was looking for.’

Piotr’s eyes are unwavering. ‘What are you looking for?’

And walking over to him, I do a very uncharacteristic thing, in a day full of uncharacteristic events. Slipping my arm through his, I kiss his cheek, very lightly. ‘Not diamonds,’ I say softly.

The assistant nods, deflating.

‘Thank you,’ I add. ‘They’re all so beautiful.’

‘Yes, thank you!’ Bunny smiles, taking Piotr’s other arm. ‘The champagne was delicious!’

‘A pleasure.’ The man bows, his professionalism always intact. He begins carefully replacing all the rings in the right order.

Then Alex takes something out of his bag and hands it to him.

‘Oh!’ The man blinks in surprise. ‘What’s this?’

It’s a golden box of chocolates, tied with an elaborate black silk ribbon.

‘I chose them!’ Alex announces proudly. ‘There are no nuts and no marzipan!’

And then he races back to join us, clinging to Piotr’s leg, laughing with delight.

‘You’re full of surprises,’ I say, as Piotr steers us all towards the nearest exit.

I can feel his eyes on my face but concentrate instead on how easy it is for him to walk with a four-year-old balanced on his shoe.

He draws me closer, swerving past a clump of Germans paralysed with admiration in front of the fish counter.

‘So are you.’

Jake and I are sitting on a park bench in Soho Square. It’s a warm, beautiful summer’s day; the leaves on the high plane trees rustle in the breeze. There’s not a cloud in the sky. Bodies are stretched out on the lawn, office workers taking in the sun before they head back to their desks.

Jake’s hunched over, arms resting on his knees. He’s wearing his leather jacket, even though it’s far too warm, and shades against the sun. We watch as a small child, a little blond boy of two or three, chases a pigeon across the footpath, a hopeless pursuit and yet all the while giggling with delight.