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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.
