Yes, I am about to have sex with your wife, he was tempted to say, getting caught up in the thrill of the moment, the joy at the way it was all dropping into his lap. But sensibly he hung up.
The photographs of two teenage children, a boy and a girl, displayed downstairs in the living room were a slight worry. But their two bedrooms were immaculate. Not the bedrooms of children who were living here. He concluded they were the husband’s children by a former marriage.
There was a cat, one of those nasty-looking Burmese things that had glared at him in the kitchen. He’d given it a kick and it had disappeared through the flap. All was quiet. He was happy and excited.
He could feel some houses living and breathing around him. Especially when the boilers rumbled into life and the walls vibrated. Breathing! Yes, like him now, breathing so hard with excitement he could hear the sound of it in his ears, and he could hear the pounding of his heart, the roaring of his blood coursing through his veins like it was in some kind of a race.
Oh, God, this felt so good!
28
Thursday 8 January
Roxy Pearce had been waiting all week for tonight. Dermot was away on a business trip and she had invited Iannis over for a meal. She wanted to make love to him here in her own home. The idea felt deliciously wicked!
She hadn’t seen him since Saturday afternoon, when she’d strutted around his apartment naked in her brand- new Jimmy Choos, and they’d screwed with her still wearing them, which had driven him wild.
She’d read somewhere that the female mosquito gets so crazed for blood that she will do anything, even if she knows she will die in the process, to get that blood.
That’s how she felt about being with Iannis. She had to see him. Had to have him, whatever the cost. And the more she had him, the more she needed him.
I am not a good person, she thought guiltily, as she drove home, accelerating her silver Boxster through the street-lit darkness up swanky Shirley Drive, past the Hove recreation ground. She turned right into The Droveway, then right again into their drive and up to the big, square, modern house they’d had built, a secluded paradise within the city, with its rear garden backing on to the playing fields of a private school. The security lights popped on as she headed along the short drive.
I am SO not a good person.
This was the kind of thing you could rot in hell for. She’d been brought up a good Catholic girl. Brought up to believe in sin and eternal damnation. And she’d got herself both the T-shirt and the one-way ticket to damnation with Dermot.
He had been married when they’d met. She’d lured him away from his wife, and the kids he adored, after an intensely passionate affair that had become stronger and stronger over two years. They’d been crazily in love. But then, when they’d got together, the magic between them had steadily evaporated.
Now those same deep passions had exploded inside her all over again with Iannis. Just like Dermot, he was married, with two much younger children. Her best friend, Viv Daniels, had not approved, warning her she was going to get a reputation as a marriage wrecker. But she couldn’t help it, could not switch off those feelings.
She reached up to the sun visor for the garage clicker, waited for the door to rise, drove into the space which seemed cavernous without Dermot’s BMW and switched off the engine. Then she grabbed the Waitrose bags off the passenger seat and climbed out.
She had first met Iannis when Dermot had taken her to dinner at Thessalonica in Brighton. Iannis had come and sat at their table when their meal was finished, plying them with ouzo on the house and staring constantly at her.
It was his voice she’d fallen for first. The passionate way he spoke about food and about life, in his broken English. His handsome, unshaven face. His hairy chest, visible through a white shirt opened almost to the navel. His ruggedness. He seemed to be a man without a care in the world, relaxed, happy in his skin.
And so intensely sexy!
As she opened the internal door, then tapped out the code on the touch pad to silence the beeping alarm warning, she did not notice that a different light on the panel was on from the usual one. It was the night-setting warning for downstairs only, isolating the upstairs. But she was totally preoccupied in an altogether different direction. Would Iannis like her cooking?
She’d opted for something simple: mixed Italian hors d’oeuvres, then rib-eye steak and salad. And a bottle – or two – from Dermot’s prized cellar.
Shutting the door behind her she called out to the cat, ‘Sushi! Yo Sushi! Yo! Mummy’s home!’
The cat’s stupid name had been Dermot’s idea – taken from the first restaurant they had gone to, in London, on their first date.
Silence greeted her, which was unusual.
Normally the cat would stride over to meet her, rub against her leg and then look up at her expectantly, waiting for dinner. But he wasn’t there. Probably out in the garden, she thought. Fine.
She looked at her watch, then at the kitchen clock: 6.05. Less than an hour before Iannis was due to arrive.
It had been another shitty day at the office, with a silent phone and the overdraft on fast-track towards its limit. But tonight, for a few hours, she was not going to care. Nothing mattered but her time with Iannis. She would savour every minute, every second, every nanosecond!
She emptied the contents of the bags on to the kitchen table, sorted them out, grabbed a bottle of Dermot’s prized Chateau de Meursault and put it in the fridge to chill, then she opened a bottle of his Gevrey Chambertin 2000 to let it breathe. Next she prised the lid off a can of cat food, scooped its contents into the bowl and placed it on the floor. ‘Sushi!’ she called out again. ‘Yo Sushi! Supper!’
Then she hurried upstairs, planning to shower, shave her legs, spray on some Jo Malone perfume, then go back down and get the meal ready.
From inside her wardrobe, he heard her calling out, and he pulled his hood on over his head. Then he listened to her footsteps coming up the stairs. Everything inside him tightened with excitement. With anticipation.
He was in a red mist of excitement. Hard as hell! Trying to calm his breathing. Watching her from behind the silk dresses, through the curtained glass-fronted wardrobe doors. She looked so beautiful. Her sleek black hair. The careless way she kicked off her black court shoes. Then stepped wantonly out of her navy two-piece. As if she was doing it for him!
Thank you!
She removed her white blouse and her bra. Her breasts were smaller than he had imagined they might be, but that did not matter. They were OK. Quite firm, but with small nipples. It didn’t matter. Breasts were not his thing.
Now her undies!
She was a shaver! Bald and white, down to a thin strip of a Brazilian! Very hygienic.
Thank you!
He was so aroused he was dripping perspiration.
Then she walked, naked, through into the bathroom. He listened to the hiss of the shower. This would be a good moment, he knew, but he didn’t want her all wet and slippery with soap. He liked the idea that she dried herself for him and perhaps put on some perfume for him.
After a few minutes she came back out into the bedroom, swathed in a big towel, a smaller white towel wrapped around her head. Then suddenly, as if she was giving him a private performance, she let the towel drop from her body, opened a wardrobe door, and selected from the racks a pair of elegant, gleaming black shoes with long stiletto heels.
