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Jarret was removing her blouse. ‘Please, we want to fuck you, both of us, at the same time. Do it for us, for me, Amy, because you love me?’

It was extraordinarily erotic to have two men adoring you, desperate to make erotic love to you, want to take possession of you, ensure that you would reap the greatest sexual pleasure imaginable from their lust for you. What woman would not lose herself in lasciviousness, and acquiesce to her lover’s pleadings?

Amy knew just as the men did that she could deny Jarret nothing. She kept telling herself she was a woman with a strong libido, and this was her sexual fantasy come true. Here indeed was a once-in-a-lifetime erotic adventure. Two sets of hands and lips, two mouths, two penises to enter her together, at the same time.

They were tender lovers, they were sweet, they were pure lust. Hours passed and they lost themselves in sex, but their passion was not only sexual. They recited exquisite love poems to her as they took her further and further down the road to oblivion, three people making love to each other. All was bliss until in the early hours after dawn the alcoholic haze began to wear off. It was during the time Amy was being riven by Philip from behind while Jarret took her from the front as she lay on her side. Jarret had, of course, been right when he told her she would never have experienced anything as sensational as having sex with two men to the same beat,
of being the recipient of three people coming inside her together, or how raunchy it would be for her to flow with their many orgasms.

She was kissing Jarret. It was only Jarret that she wanted. For him only did she feel deep and abiding love. He was enough for her, had always been enough for her, and yet she was allowing another man to pleasure her. She had agreed to enter a world of depravity for Jarret, not because she wanted Philip or because she had any feelings for him. She had merely used him as a stud to please her lover. Amy found that, not her going to bed with two men, deplorable. Fear, raging fear for how low she had sunk for the love of Jarret, now took possession of her. She tried to extricate herself from the situation as quickly and gracefully as was possible. The men thought she was exhausted, which she was. They never guessed that it was not tiredness but fear for what she had done that put a close to this night of depravity.

It was a Sunday morning. The three of them had breakfast together and miraculously there was no embarrassment. Not a word was spoken about the night before. The only thing Philip said as he was leaving the flat was, ‘I drank too much, we all did, but I want you both to know it wasn’t just sex. I was making love to you. I don’t think I’ll ever meet two lovers like you again. One always senses that about you two, but now I know it.’ And then he was gone.

A few hours later three dozen white lilies arrived. No note, merely a white card that said, ‘Thank you.’

As Amy was placing them in water, she turned to
Jarret and told him, ‘Don’t ever ask me to do that again.’

There was a certain firmness in her voice, a look of determination in her eyes. He went to stand next to her and his only reply was, ‘I thought you might say that.’ Then he kissed her on the cheek and walked from the room. She was grateful he had not called her bourgeois.

A staff meeting had been called by Amy where she explained the situation and made her assistants redundant, giving them two months’ pay each. Amy felt sad and depressed. She put on a brave face for Jarret, but her stress was visible. They didn’t talk about it.

The eviction notice had been nailed to the door of the flat. It was Jarret who had torn it off and handed it to Amy one evening when they came in from a dinner party.

The bills were piling up on her desk and she was calling people, asking for longer to pay them. Her creditors were sympathetic and gave her time. She would sell everything she had except for her library and her clothes. That would get her out of debt but leave her penniless. The most dreadful thing was that, try as she might, she could not see this as a mere hiccup, and part of the reason for that was that her lifestyle would end and she would no longer be able to live with Jarret when he came to New York.

Jarret had done what he had always done when he was living with Amy: left his mark everywhere in the flat, making it his own. When he was there she thought of it as their flat, and he was comfortable to think of it that way too when it suited him.

It was about a week after their night with Philip. Amy
was sitting by the fire going over the list of her belongings that would be going to auction, when Jarret sat on the arm of her chair.

‘Amy, did you really mean it? That I can have that tea pot I like so much?’

‘Yes, if you like,’ she answered him, looking up from her list as she crossed the tea pot off it.

‘I’d like it for one of the rooms in the
yalis
. I think I can fit it into my case.’

Amy’s heart felt cold, her mouth dry. He was leaving. This time she could not afford the self-indulgence of ranting and raving in despair. ‘When are you going?’ she asked.

‘In two days’ time. I was going to stay longer, but frankly I can’t stand being in the middle of your problems. There is nothing I can do for you anyway. You’re a clever girl, you’ll work it all out, and I’ll come back when things are better for you.’

He rose from the arm of the chair and walked through the flat to their bedroom. After several minutes she followed him and sat on the end of the bed, watching him take his case from the wardrobe, open it, and place it on the floor.

‘Why are you packing now?’

‘Easy does it. I have so many things to try and fit into my case, I thought I would start now to see if there’s room otherwise I might have to borrow an extra one from you.’

‘I’ll need all my cases for my move.’

‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘To whoever will take me until I get things sorted out and a job.’ She waited for him to say he had a place for her. That was just what she needed, to have somewhere ready and waiting for her at a distance from the mess she was in here, and to be with him, have him take care of her for a while. To go with her lover – what could be more natural?

He wasn’t even evasive but looked her straight in the eyes and suggested, ‘To your parents?’

There was a slight smirk on his lips, a nasty sound in his voice. Many had been the time since he had met her parents that he had reminded her what a common, rude and abusive mother she had.

‘No, I guess not,’ he told her now.

‘Any other suggestions?’ she asked, not feeling at all inclined to let him get away so easily as the last time.

‘No. None.’ His voice was hard and firm.

Amy had expected he would not be forthcoming with an invitation, but to hear it so unequivocally from his lips was a shock. She simply did not believe that in the end he could do it, walk out on her when she was in need and with not even a roof over her head.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she told him, and left the flat.

When she finally returned home, he was already in bed. She undressed in front of him as she always did then bathed and put on a fresh nightgown and got into bed with him. Neither of them spoke until he took her in his arms and then it was sex talk, love talk. Amy listened and thought: What a strange thing love is. She knew that Jarret was worthless, without heart, that he
had no scruples. Yet she was suffering at the point of torture because he was betraying her. Had he been betraying her all along?

She found her answer. It was shortly after he stood in the doorway to her flat, ready to leave for the airport, having told her, ‘Remember, let me have an address where you’ll be staying, I’ll be back when things are good for you again. Write. This isn’t goodbye, you love me too much for that, and you know how I feel about you.’

Once the door closed behind him, Amy collapsed into a chair. She was emotionally drained. She had been determined not to break down in front of him, to deny him nothing, not in their sex life or the love she had for him. She had carried on hanging on to her love for Jarret as if nothing had happened. He had gone away thinking that she would recover and forgive.

How had he done it? He had ruined her. No, to be more accurate, he had allowed her to ruin herself for the love of him.

Amy had never felt so alone and adrift as she did now without him there, without loving him. She wanted to weep but no tears came. She went to the bedroom and began straightening the room. He had bought new shirts. The cardboard and clear plastic packaging was flowing out of the waste basket. She emptied the basket into a larger one from the bathroom then emptied that one into the waste chute in the kitchen and returned to the bedroom. Her eyes fell on a scrunched-up ball of paper that had been left behind. She picked it up and sat down
at her dressing table. The ball still in her hand, she stared into the mirror. She hardly recognised herself. If only she could weep and wash away this stranger she saw reflected back at her. She sat there for some time, unable to move.

Finally she flexed her fingers, releasing them from the tight nervous fist she had made of them, and the ball of scrunched-up paper fell on the dressing table. She picked it up again and without thought began straightening out the sheets of paper, three pieces of fine stationery. She smoothed them out as best she could and recognised the violet-coloured ink. It was one of the letters she had always been so curious about but had never read.

And now they came, the floods of tears. Amy’s heart was broken. She felt as if she were crying not only for herself but for the Contessa Armida, for Savannah, and for every other woman who had loved a man beyond reason, for every woman alive who had ever been betrayed by her lover.

LONDON, SONNING,
VENICE, ISTANBUL
1994

Chapter 15

Amy slipped from the past into the present to the constant muffled drone of the plane’s engine – the same sound that had sent her into a half-dream where she had revisited her past. It had all been buried deep, and been forgotten long ago. Incredible that she should remember it so vividly now. It had run through her mind like an old black and white B-movie: a melodrama. Had it all really happened like that? Had she really been so weak? Had Fee and Jarret been so very evil? Or had time and memory done their work, distorted events?

Jarret Sparrow had been the great love of Amy’s life to date, neither time nor memory could change that. Now, on a flight from Geneva to London, her denial was over. She could accept that truth and need never run away from it again.

Reliving that was the catharsis that set Amy free to love again on a grand scale once more, if she so chose. Until now, her moment of truth, she had never really understood that she had been struck down by the cruel love affair from which she had never wholly recovered.

Suddenly Amy’s inner perspective changed. She felt lighter in spirit, as if there were cause for celebration. Leaning across the empty seat next to her, she looked
up the aisle. The air stewards were chatting together. She caught their attention and an attendant hurried forward to her.

‘A bottle of Krug, please. A half bottle if you have one.’

‘Only full bottles of Krug, Miss Ross.’

‘That’ll do.’

‘You won’t be able to drink it leisurely. We’re due to land in less than thirty minutes.’

‘We won’t worry about that, let’s just call it a self-indulgent celebration.’

One glass of champagne and Amy used the plane’s telephone next to her seat. She slipped her credit card into the slot and punched in Charles’s private number at Claridge’s. His butler answered the telephone.

‘Hello, Raskin, it’s Miss Ross. Is Sir Charles at home?’

It seemed like an age before she heard Charles’s voice. ‘How would you like to take me to lunch?’

‘I’d rather take you to bed.’

‘That might be managed.’

‘This
is
Amy?’

‘Yes, of course it is.’ She couldn’t help but laugh.

‘It’s years since you’ve said that.’

‘I said might, not yes. Let’s just see how lunch goes. That is if you’re free?’

‘I’ll make myself free. Where are you?’

‘Sky high, so to speak.’

‘What are you talking about, Amy?’

‘I’m on a flight from Geneva, landing in about half an hour.’

‘I’ll send a car for you.’

‘Great, then I can drink as much of this champagne as I like.’

‘Champagne on a flight? You never drink on planes.’

‘A special occasion.’

‘The end of your desert of a sex life?’

Amy refused to answer, merely laughed and pushed the disconnect button.

The man sitting in the aisle seat across from her leaned over and said with a broad smile, ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so but you’ve got a great laugh.’

Amy smiled at him. ‘Do you think so? I would have said distinctive. People don’t forget it.’

‘I shan’t. A great-looking lady with joy in her soul who can laugh as you do. I would imagine you to be a woman few men forget. I know I won’t.’

‘But you don’t even know me.’

‘That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to. That’s what it’s about. A man sees a woman – on a plane, a train, in the street. She has a certain beauty, a vibrancy that’s appealing to him. For a fleeting moment she captures his total attention. He’s not made a move, the moment passes, and she vanishes from his life, but remains lodged in his psyche, a fantasy of erotic bliss, possibly even the
grand amour
.’

‘You’re a romantic.’

‘I confess that I am.’

‘I like romantic men, but they must be honest, kind, and very sweet. Are you such a man?’ she teased.

‘To the letter,’ was his answer. He followed it with a broad smile.

Amy liked his face. In his youth he must have been an outstandingly handsome man. In middle age he was a ruggedly good-looking one. A man who’d skied off piste all his life, who’d sailed against the winds, an adventurer who’d loved dangerously. He wore his age well, every line; the folds that appeared in his face when he smiled showed character, sensuality, and his eyes were intelligent, mischievous and very much alive. Happy eyes. They seemed to speak, to say what Amy was thinking: ‘It’s time to love again.’

‘Then I invite you to join me in a glass of champagne.’

He was very tall with a slender but muscular body dressed very well in an Armani dark grey double-breasted suit and wearing the perfect navy blue silk tie with minute white dots woven in it. He sat down next to her after telling the steward to bring another glass.

‘I saw you at the airport with the de Boulets.’

‘You know them?’

‘Very well. I have a house on the lake close to theirs.’

‘Then you live in Geneva?’

‘No, not exclusively.’

The steward, having brought a glass for the man, filled it and recharged Amy’s. They drank the perfectly chilled wine, and then he said, ‘I wanted to ask you to join me for a drink several times.’

‘What stopped you?’

‘You. You seemed to drift off into another place, another time. To have asked you then would have been an intrusion. The older I get, the less I can face rejection. That place where you were, was it a good place?’

‘The best and worst time of my life. I was revisiting it.’

‘So you could let it go or you could hang on to it?’

Amy looked intently at this handsome stranger. She smiled and said, ‘That’s an interesting question, one I would not have expected from a man with so smooth a line as you cast to hook my attention. Does it work every time?’

‘Pretty much every time.’ He was clearly enjoying himself and took a long draught from his glass. ‘Do you always answer a question with a question?’

Amy reached across him to take the bottle of Krug and top up their glasses. He removed the bottle from her hand and while he was pouring she answered him. ‘I don’t think that’s a particular habit of mine. As it happens it was to let go, hence the bottle of Krug in celebration. But what is more interesting is that I had pulled out of the memory box something I thought had long ago been discarded, something I had no idea had been dominating a certain segment of my life.’

‘Great love affairs can do that. They never quite go away unless you can stand back, step out of your skin and see yourself and the affair as an observer, not the observed.’

‘Why do you assume that it was a
grand amour
? It could have been a business deal, the experience of seeing a great work of art?’

‘Yes, it could have been.’

They remained silent for some minutes, drinking champagne. Then without thinking Amy told him, ‘The
last twenty years of my life have been the best years of my life. I’ve achieved everything I wanted in my career. I have had wonderful lovers, happy times, peace and contentment. Then a few weeks ago, I had a dream. I dreamt about an old lover. He returned to claim me after nearly thirty years. It was an unpleasant dream, disturbing. Several days later, quite by chance, I met the man I jilted for the man in my dream. I hardly recognised him, had never thought of him from the very last time I spoke to him decades ago. What a coincidence that they should both appear in one form or another within days.

‘The first chance in weeks I had to relax and calm my mind, empty it of all thought, was when I unstrapped my seat belt and leaned back in this seat. I closed my eyes and thought maybe now is the time to review, to remember. I had no idea I was holding on to anything from all those years ago.’

‘And now you feel wonderful?’

‘I felt wonderful when I got on the plane in Geneva. Now I feel as if some invisible string that had been tethering me has broken and I can sail with the wind.’ Amy gave a deep sigh then laughed.

‘And the man you jilted?’

‘He sends flowers.’

‘The man in the dream?’

‘I think he was always a dream, but I wasn’t asleep.’

‘I think you should have lunch with me.’

‘Why?’

‘Decades are a long time to wait between great love affairs.’

‘How are you so sure that I have waited?’

‘Lovers, affairs. A woman as attractive as you has had many, I’m certain. But the
grand amour
… you can’t have had that because you never let go until now of the one that traumatised you.’

‘I think you’re too clever for me. I’ve known you for fifteen minutes and you know more about me than the men I have loved.’

‘Too clever to have lunch with?’

‘No, I think I could manage that, but I already have a luncheon date.’

She liked this man. Something was sparking between Amy and this stranger, something she had almost forgotten could happen between two people, that little something extra that is so rare and so inexplicable.

‘I can’t ask you to dinner,’ he told her.

‘But you would like to?’

‘Very much.’

The steward arrived at that moment to collect the glasses and the champagne bottle and to tell them to fasten their seat belts and ready themselves for the landing.

They were the last two to leave the first-class section of the plane. He helped her on with her coat: brown cashmere with a huge lynx collar. ‘You’re nearly as tall as I am,’ he remarked.

Amy turned to face him. ‘You don’t like tall women?’

‘Wrong. I never fall in love with short tiny women.’
He lifted some of her hair that had become caught under her collar. Their eyes met.

‘Are you implying that I might qualify?’

‘I’m not sure. I would have to know you longer than half an hour. If you could have made lunch I might have known by then.’

She laughed. ‘You’re a terrific flirt.’

‘I am.’

‘A smoothie.’

‘I am.’

‘A ladies’ man.’

‘I confess, I love ladies, and would like to love you.’

‘You’re very direct.’

‘Not always. Only when there’s no point in being otherwise.’

‘We’re strangers.’

‘Most great love affairs begin with two strangers,’ he told her.

‘You seem very sure that we could be a great love affair.’

‘Are you so sure we cannot be?’ There was disbelief in his voice.

The steward approached them and asked if they would be kind enough to leave the plane. They walked through the terminal together. The silence between them was not awkward, more comfortable. At the baggage carousel she told him, ‘I have no luggage.’

‘Neither do I.’

They passed quickly through passport control and silently walked together through the busy terminal
teeming with people. They were through the glass doors and out into the cold and crisp air. This was a busy hour at Heathrow airport: cars in a constant flow of coming and going, people rushing away to lives no longer suspended in mid-air, baggage being shifted and packed and unpacked into waiting taxis and cars. Amy and her stranger seemed the only two people oblivious to the goings-on and not in a rush to get away.

‘See me again. Take a chance on me. I’ll never hurt you. I think you might be someone I would like to spend the rest of my life making happy. I need time to find out.’

‘I can’t make lunch and you can’t make dinner.’

At that moment Charles’s Rolls-Royce drove up to the terminal building and directly to where Amy was standing. His chauffeur went round the car and, after tipping his hat to Amy, opened the rear door for her.

‘This is madness. Wonderful romantic madness. I don’t know if it’s the memory of what it was like to be swept away by love, of being one and whole with another human being, of dwelling in erotic oblivion, or your seductive charm, but I thank you for making me see that I want such a love as I once had. Only this time not with a cad but with a good man who’s not afraid to love me.’

‘I can’t leave this to bad timing, can you?’ he asked her.

‘There’s tomorrow.’

‘Not for us. I leave for South Africa tomorrow, almost at dawn. But there can be other tomorrows for us if we
want them. We only have to want them enough.’

Amy saw a maroon Jaguar cheekily pull in between a taxi and Charles’s Rolls. So did the stranger standing next to her proposing love on a grand scale. A toot of a horn, an arm through a window waving at him.

‘You’re being met too?’

‘Yes. Look, we don’t have much time, and time is what we need to have together. I’ll reserve a room at the Connaught for tonight in your name. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to get away for a few hours to be with you but I’ll try. If you’re not there I’ll understand, and if I don’t make it – well, you’ll know that I tried my damnedest.’

Together they saw the Jaguar’s door open and a tall, long-legged beauty with long blonde hair unfold herself from the car. She could have been no more than twenty-two. Amy looked at her stranger and raised an eyebrow but said nothing, merely smiled at him and walked towards Charles’s waiting car.

He walked with Amy for several paces before the girl rushed between them and threw her arms round his neck. From the comfort of the Rolls Amy watched them kissing. He placed an arm round the girl’s waist. His smile for her was charming and sexy, the same smile he had given Amy, only now she recognised it for what it was. She liked it, wanted his smile to be for her again. For some weeks, ever since Peter came back into her life, ever since the Jarret dream, she had known that her years of celibacy were over. They were drifting away as naturally as she had drifted into
them. She ordered the chauffeur to drive on.

Lunch with Charles was a joyous occasion. Amy was ebullient and Charles fell in love with her that little bit more. Over the smoked salmon mousse and triangles of buttered toast, he commented, ‘I’ve never seen you as you are today. Something has happened to make you – well, I don’t exactly know what. What’s happened?’

How could she explain to him what had happened on the plane between a walk down a lane of memories that had set her emotionally free and meeting a stranger who in a few minutes was a more grand and exciting attraction than Charles had ever been? She answered, ‘The Soutine? Maybe that’s it.’