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Adam pulled himself to his feet, facing her. ‘Listen, there’s a company flat we’re having renovated. It’s in one of the best squares in Notting Hill, a fantastic lateral conversation with solid oak floors and …’
Summer felt herself switch off. She enjoyed listening to Adam, learning from him, talking about books and movies and faraway places. But when it came to business she could feel herself cloud over.
‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Adam.
‘Eh? Of what?’ replied Summer.
‘Of living there. It won’t be for six weeks or so. But I think you need some independence and it’d be nice if we could have a little more privacy, wouldn’t it?’ he added, slipping his hand inside her bikini bottoms.
‘Really? You’re kidding?’
Adam shook his head. ‘Now don’t get too excited. I’ll get a proper contract drawn up, naming you as my tenant.’
Summer could feel her pulse race with excitement. She would love to get out from under her mother’s shadow and it would be heaven to have Adam coming around for long Sunday breakfasts, but still … There was a slight taste of something, well, very Molly about what he was saying. For all of Adam’s philanthropic comments – did he really think she needed saving from her mother? – the setup had the distinct whiff of mistress. She didn’t even know if it was possible to be elevated to mistress status when Adam wasn’t even married. But when she looked into his dark brown eyes, all her misgivings melted away and she felt a stir in her groin. When she was with Adam she felt desired, protected. She also felt something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. She felt in love.
‘Are you at least going to think about it?’ asked Adam, putting his hands around her waist.
‘I don’t want to live there for free. I won’t like how that feels.’
Adam nodded. ‘I’ll get a lease drawn up and we can fix a rent. Although I think you can rest assured it’ll be very reasonable.’
He slipped the palms of his hands under the sides of her bikini bottoms and began to peel them down.
‘And to answer your question,’ his words became muffled as his mouth journeyed south. ‘No, there aren’t any others.’
42
Karin was sure she was being followed. At first she thought it was just paranoia brought on by stress and overwork, but it was happening too frequently to be just her imagination. At first it was nothing more than an eerie sense of being watched, the feeling of unseen eyes on her back or an involuntary shiver, even though it was seventy-five degrees outside. She had never been one to get easily spooked, but at the same time she had always possessed a sharp sense of knowing when something was wrong and it was making her jumpy. It made her close the curtains as soon as it went dark. It made her request the use of Adam’s driver more frequently, although she did not tell him her suspicions – he would have laughed, especially as she often mocked his Manhattan security consciousness with his ex-SAS driver and his friends who had bodyguards and submarines that circled their yachts when they were on holiday.
She first saw him late on a hot, sunny afternoon in July. An apricot sun was sitting low in the hazy, pale blue sky and Karin had finished work early to enjoy the evening. Adam was in New York and she wanted some downtime to relax, perhaps sort out some paperwork. Swim Show Miami, the industry’s most important trade fair, was only two weeks away and she needed to make sure they were prepared. Her house was just round the corner from a fabulous Italian deli and she strolled down there to get some beef tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella for an early supper on the roof terrace. Coming back, she cut through the South Kensington back-streets of tall white townhouses and hidden parks feeling relaxed and happy. Then she saw him. He was sitting on a wall at the end of her street reading a music magazine. His hair was lank and brown, pushed back over his ears, and his long face had a sullen expression. At first she thought he was just another teenager, but the way he had looked so directly, so intensely at her had made her feel deeply unsettled. As she passed, he began to follow her, the clop of his heavy trainers clearly audible behind her. She climbed up the stone steps of her house without looking back and slammed the door shut. Peering through the peephole she could see his distorted image standing outside and she quickly double-bolted the front door. Don’t be so silly, Karin, she scolded herself. He’s only a kid. She even managed a small laugh as she climbed the stairs to run a warm, oily bath. He’s only a silly little kid. What harm could he do?
43
The only problem with living out in Buckinghamshire was the journey home, thought Molly, pressing her foot down on the accelerator. Marcus had given her his Maserati two weeks ago after he had bought a brand-new silver Jaguar XS. She loved the way it ate up the road. Even though she had not officially moved into The Standlings, she was fast beginning to think of ‘the manor’ as home. Her interior decorations were almost complete, most importantly the conversion of a bedroom into a climate-controlled ‘his and hers’ dressing room into which Molly had moved all of her extensive wardrobe. She was also delighted with the new Smallbone kitchen with its racks of shiny Global knives she would never touch and the brand-new panelled library designed to look 300 years old. The pièce de résistance, however, was the ten-man indoor hot tub, modelled on the grotto at the Playboy mansion. Molly had been itching to have one of those since she had been to a party there in the 1980s – now that was a great night out, she smiled. Marcus, however, had almost had a meltdown at the expenditure Molly was racking up, but even he had to admit the place looked amazing.
&n
bsp; If she could have picked up The Standlings and dropped it in the middle of Kensington, it would have been perfect, but it wasn’t. It was fifty miles outside of sodding London, which felt ten times longer after the two cocktails and the line of coke she had taken a couple of hours ago when she met some friends in Notting Hill for lunch.
She pushed her foot down even harder, wanting to get home for 4.30. She had discovered a wonderful woman in the village, a former beauty therapist at Dorchester spa who had downshifted to Buckinghamshire and came round to Molly’s once a week to do a very respectable manicure and pedicure. As she hit sixty mph on a B-road, her mobile rang and she reached across the passenger seat to grab it. She hadn’t seen the slight bend in the road, and the car jerked as it mounted a roadside kerb. Molly dropped the mobile phone and tightened her grip on the steering wheel as she tried to control the vehicle. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she muttered as the front left wheel bumped back on the tarmac. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ she yelled, banging her palm against the dashboard as the sound of a police siren wailed behind her.
She’d been whisked through the court process. Molly had actually considered herself lucky to get away with a £2000 fine and a twelve-month ban on her licence after she had seen the three po-faced country bumpkins on the magistrates’ bench. No amount of Chanel or pearls was going to sway those inbreds, she thought. She was entirely correct. Molly was convicted of drink-driving when the bench completely rejected her mitigating plea that she had needed to drink vodka cranberry to sort out a nasty bout of cystitis. Still, at least she hadn’t received a sentence of community service – imagine! Scraping chewing gum off railway bridges with her nails? – and hopefully her driving ban would mean that Marcus would finally sort them out with a Midas Corporation driver.
‘Now we really have it to get this sorted,’ said, Marcus seriously, sitting on one of the slate-grey sofas in The Standlings’ drawing room with the cold, efficient manner of somebody who was dealing with a business problem. ‘I have phoned Alcoholics Anonymous but apparently they don’t take bookings. They say you need to initiate it yourself by going to a meeting. I think that would be a good first step, Molly.’
Molly sat back with the sulky, truculent expression of a grounded teenager. Marcus had spent too many years in America, she thought; he was beginning to sound like Oprah.
‘I am not going to Alcoholics Anonymous because I am not an alcoholic,’ she said, stubbornly refusing to meet his gaze. ‘And before you ask, I’m not checking into the bloody Priory either.’
‘Well, what about another rehabilitation programme then?’ he continued soberly. ‘I have a friend who has recommended a very discreet place in Wiltshire. It’s tough, but apparently they have incredible results in three or four weeks.’
‘Marcus!’ Molly slapped her hand against the George Smith velvet sofa with a thud. ‘You aren’t listening! I am not an alcoholic or a coke-head. There is no problem to solve apart from finding the two-thousand-pound fine you’re too stingy to pay for me.’
Molly got up and started pacing around the drawing room, while Marcus watched her closely, as if she was going to do something foolish at any time.
‘Well, what are you going to do Molly? We cannot let the matter just rest here. You know I love you, but I do think you have a problem and we need to get it sorted.’
Molly knew that there was no wriggling out of this situation. Marcus had been like a dog with a bone since the offence; he’d got some crazy notion that this was all for her own good. As if, she thought. She had no intention of sitting on a plastic chair talking about her terrible childhood with a bunch of losers at AA, or disappearing off the circuit for four weeks to go cold turkey in the middle of nowhere. But it was clear from Marcus’s belligerent expression that she had to do something. With an offer to move in to The Standlings full time surely just around the corner, she wasn’t going to take any chances.
