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"I would like you to make love to me. I am using that phrase on purpose. I am using it because I have not used it in twenty-five years, and I am using it because I am not, tonight, asking to be fucked. I want your mouth on me slowly. I want to put my mouth on you slowly. I want to look at your face while you come and I want you to look at mine, and I want, for the first time in a quarter century, to feel what being touched on purpose by a woman who is not afraid of me feels like."

Leo nodded.

She did not hesitate. Vivienne smiled to herself.

She had not asked a bodyguard to fuck her this time.

She had asked a woman to see her and be with her.

Vivienne's eyes filled.

She let Leo see it. Leo, after a four-beat hold, leaned in and put her forehead against Vivienne's, and put her thumb, very soft, under Vivienne's eye.

"Come here."

She came.

They lay down together on the linen, face to face, on their sides. Leo put her hand flat on Vivienne's face and she kissed her, and the kiss was nothing like the kisses had been so far. It was slow. It was patient. It had none of the teeth. Leo's hand moved down the long line of Vivienne's side over the cream silk of the nightdress and gathered it at the hip and drew it, slow, up over her thigh, and she did not hurry, and Vivienne did not hurry her.

They stayed face to face.

That was the condition Vivienne had set, and Leo, tonight, honoured the condition. Leo's hand found her, two fingers, slow, and at the same time Vivienne's hand, steady between them, went between Leo's thighs, under the black briefs, and found Leo already wet. They held each other's eyes. They moved their hands together. They kissed between breaths. Leo's mouth at Vivienne's mouth. Leo's thumb at the top of her. Vivienne's fingers inside Leo on the same rhythm. Vivienne did not close her eyes. Leo did not close hers.

They did not rush. The cream silk slid up over Vivienne's waist. Leo's vest came off under Vivienne's hand. The lamp stayed on.

Vivienne said Leo's name once, quiet.

Leo said Vivienne's name back.

The orgasms came staggered, not together. Vivienne first, with her breath held, with her hand still moving between Leo's thighs, with her eyes, wet, open. Leo a count behind her, with her forehead against Vivienne's, with her fingers still inside her, with a small low shaken breath at Vivienne's mouth that Vivienne caught and kissed.

They stayed there.

Forehead to forehead. Fingers still inside one another. Neither of them said anything.

After some minutes Leo moved her hand. She drew Vivienne's nightdress back down over her thighs, unhurried, and she pulled her in, and Vivienne, on the pillow next to her, let her face come, finally, into Leo's shoulder, and cried, once, quiet, for three breaths, and stopped, and did not apologise.

Leo did not ask her to.

Leo's hand stayed at the back of Vivienne's head. Her other hand came up, slow, and drew the linen over both of them. She did not speak into the crying. She did not offer words for it. She breathed, slow, at Vivienne's temple, and she was there holding her, which was the only thing Vivienne, at fifty-two, in her own bed, on the worst day she had had in twenty-five years, needed her to be.

The cry finished.

Vivienne's breath came back to a line.

She did not move. Leo did not move. For some minutes they lay like that in the lamp light, and Vivienne, who had come into this bedroom tonight with every muscle up under her skin in a cable, let the cable go, one strand at a time, and when it was gone she was, underneath it, only tired.

"Leo."

"Mm."

"Thank you."

"Vivienne."

"Sleep."

"Yes."