by Freya North
‘And here is Petra,’ Rob announced as she approached his table at a busy Soho bar, ‘and – dear God – she's wearing her slippers.’
Though she stood while everyone remained seated, she felt small and mortified. Two of Rob's male colleagues glanced down at Petra's feet in fascination, a couple of his female colleagues analysed them with pity, whilst circling their own beautiful footwear.
‘Blisters!’ Petra shrugged, making a lively joke of it.
‘They're cute,’ one of the girls said lamely.
‘Watch out that none of these louts tread on your tootsies,’ slurred the other.
‘How are you, babe?’ Rob asked, pulling Petra towards him for a boozy kiss, his hand lingering over her buttocks.
‘Fine, fine,’ Petra said, aware that one of the other men was entranced by Rob's hand on her bottom. There were no spare chairs.
‘You get the next round, darling,’ Rob said, ‘and you can perch on my knee.’
‘You get the drinks in, Rob, you wanker,’ said the woman who had defined Petra's slippers as cute. ‘Here, your bum is quite small, cop a pew with me.’ And she shuffled to the edge of her chair, making room for Petra.
‘Thanks,’ said Petra. ‘I'm Petra.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I'm Laura. I work with Rob. We all do – we're toasting ourselves because the Japs love us.’
‘Cheers,’ said Petra, though she had no glass to raise.
‘Get the girl a drink!’ Laura told Rob who flung his hands up in defeat and made his way to the bar.
‘Oh dear,’ Petra said, trying to look fondly after him, ‘he looks slightly the worse for wear.’
‘All the blokes do, they are all worse for wear,’ the other girl leant across and said, ‘whereas we girls are just pleasantly pissed.’
Petra wondered whether to toast this fact, but not having a drink enabled her to just nod and grin while the other women drained their champagne flutes. She didn't much care for champagne, or wine bars. She preferred vodka and tonic in friendly pubs. This place was heaving yet echoey and she wasn't sure whether she liked the milieu, a noisy rabble of suited men and highly well-heeled women bragging and flirting; money mingling with cigarette smoke and arrogant laughter. She felt intimidated and that irritated her. However, when Rob returned with a bottle of champagne but also a vodka and tonic for Petra, she reprimanded herself not to be so provincial and judgemental.
She sipped her vodka and grinned awkwardly while Rob and his colleagues talked about stuff she didn't understand and people she didn't know. She found herself making mental notes: pay bills, speak to her bank, ring her father – her mother too. It had been ages since she'd spoken to either, let alone seen them. She'd try and arrange to visit one on Saturday, the other on Sunday. She'd take Rob along. Over the last ten months, her mother had met him only a couple of times and her father just the once. She glanced over at Rob, a slight sheen to his face from euphoria and the effort of the day, his voice loud and fast from alcohol and high spirits. He looked nice in a suit, she thought, and wasn't it good to see him in his element, holding court amongst colleagues, reeling off extravagant anecdotes and technical data from the working day just gone. Just then, Petra felt a wave of resentment towards Eric and Kitty and Gina who were not particularly subtle about their doubts over Rob. Particularly Eric. And Kitty. Gina slightly less so.
And yet look how Rob's lot include me, Petra thought to herself – Laura and the other girl asking all about our relationship, that bloke with the wet patch on his shirt asking me about diamond merchants, that other one buying me another vodka and tonic. If Rob hadn't been stressed out and moody that day he visited the studio, perhaps my lot would be more accommodating. And I probably haven't helped – taking into the studio my daft insecurities and niggles. They're very quick to criticize, my Studio Three. I bet they wouldn't say my slippers are cute.
Petra tried desperately to stifle a yawn.
‘Are we keeping you up?’ one of the men teased her.
‘You do look a little tired,’ Laura commented.
‘She was up half the night,’ Rob said.
‘Phnar phnar,’ one of his colleagues nudged him.
‘Not likely,’ Rob laughed. ‘My girlfriend gets up to all sorts of shenanigans at night – but it's nothing to do with me.’
‘I sometimes sleepwalk,’ Petra mumbled in, hoping to curtail details.
‘Yesterday – Christ, the early hours of this morning,’ Rob was saying, ‘I get a call from the police asking me do I know a Petra Flint, does she have wellingtons and a Snoopy T-shirt and is there any way she could have walked towards Whetstone whilst asleep.’
‘You're joking,’ Laura said, the focus of her pity directed at Rob which disappointed Petra.
‘Appalling,’ Petra said quickly. ‘Hence the slippers – from my blisters.’
‘Mind you, at least she was clothed,’ Rob said, raising his glass at Petra and winking.
Oh God, don't, Rob, please.
But Rob was bolstered by Bollinger and he had a captive audience and he quite liked the power of being a raconteur.
‘When I took her to meet my folks down in Hampshire, she walked into their bedroom, switched on their light, opened their cupboard doors, had a rummage around and then walked out again.’
‘Rob—’
But Rob paused for dramatic effect only. ‘Starkers!’ he told the table. ‘I don't know who it was worse for – Petra, or my parents.’
Petra hid her head in her hands.
‘Do you really not realize a thing?’ the other girl asked, slightly accusatorily. Petra shook her head without raising her face.
‘Why don't you go to bed wearing something – just in case?’ Laura asked her.
‘I do,’ Petra said, ‘especially when I'm staying away from home. I put on layers and layers before I go to bed. I don't know why I take them off – I don't know why I take off.’
‘Can't you take a sleeping pill or something? It could be dangerous.’
‘So could taking sleeping pills,’ Petra said. ‘I've seen specialists, had tests. No one knows why I do it or how to stop me.’
‘I can't believe she walked into your parents naked,’ Laura said to Rob, and Petra would rather she'd said it to her.
‘I don't mean to,’ Petra said, trying to look imploringly at Rob who didn't seem to feel her gaze. ‘I don't like it.’
‘Petra will kill me for this one – apparently, before I met her, she actually got into bed with complete strangers.’
‘Oh my God – did you have sex with them?’
‘Of course not,’ Petra said crossly. ‘I was staying at a place in the country for my friend's thirtieth birthday. I didn't know the house and I think I was getting flu anyway. But yes, I walked in my sleep into another bedroom and got into bed with a couple.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Tried to get me out,’ Petra said. ‘I only stayed for a few minutes anyway and then I went out of my own accord.’
‘Out?’
‘Into the grounds of the house,’ Petra explained, ‘but someone was having a spliff outside and they led me back.’
‘They must've thought it was damn good skunk,’ one of the men laughed.
Petra shrugged. ‘I know it sounds funny and crazy – but it's not. Believe me.’
‘It's a liability,’ Rob said. ‘That's why I'd like to say that I'm particularly proud of the deal we did today, chaps – because I was up half the night in Whetstone bloody police station.’
Everyone raised their glasses to Rob, and Petra suddenly wondered whether it would have been entirely her fault if he hadn't closed the deal with the Japanese. Poor Rob, she thought, I am a liability. So she raised her glass highest of all. And though she was desperate to go home and snuggle up with him for an early night, she stuck it out at the bar because she felt he deserved it.
Later, much later, they took a cab back to Rob's flat in Islington. Petra was beyond exhausted but woozy with vodk
a too. When she sobered up, she would think how it was not particularly logical to be mad at Rob for humiliating her yet also to want to impress him, seduce him, enamour him of her – so that perhaps he wouldn't do it again. When she sobered up, no doubt she would wonder why on earth she hadn't just said, Rob, you sod, please shut up – it's private and you're embarrassing me. But she was a little drunk and her heels throbbed and she'd knocked her knee on the side of Rob's chair and it was the same chair she'd once wet in her sleep. And suddenly she loved him for having not humiliated her by revealing that episode to his colleagues. And foremost in her conscience was that she'd pissed Rob off the night before and so now she ought to make it up to him because she didn't like upsetting people and she didn't like arguments and she didn't like conflict and she wanted to remind Rob that there was more to her than Snoopy T-shirts and calls from the police. And it would be so very nice if this relationship could last beyond a year.
Before he had time to pour himself a whisky, Petra was behind him, encircling her arms around him. She kissed him between his shoulder blades, huffing hot breath through his shirt while she travelled her hands down his stomach and unzipped his trousers.
‘What's all this?’ he murmured though he took her hand and thrust it down his boxers. He turned and kissed her hungrily. He tasted slightly rancid, of too much beer and champagne on top of a liquid lunch, but Petra told herself to block it out. She kissed him back thoughtfully, taking care to skip her tongue around his mouth, her teeth grazing his lips. She looked into his eyes which were a little bloodshot but no doubt hers were too. She didn't really like his face so much when he was drunk – it was what Eric would term ‘leery’ and Eric had seen Rob pissed once before. But leery was fine for now because sex was on the agenda. He squeezed her breasts and bucked his groin against hers. She swept her hand downwards and thrilled at the feel of his erection holding the fine wool of his suit trousers aloft. He fumbled with his belt and pushed his trousers and underpants down. His hands at her shoulders urged Petra to squat down though she stifled the wince of pain as her knee objected.
‘Suck my cock,’ he panted and Petra obliged, though she didn't need his hands guiding her head and she wished he wouldn't because it made her gag. ‘God, I'm horny,’ he murmured, pulling her up to standing, which again sent waves of pain through her knee as it was straightened. ‘Got to fuck you now,’ he said, groping and pulling her trousers as he backed her towards the sofa. His desire for her was what turned Petra on most about Rob. He could be arrogant, he could be moody. They hadn't that much in common, really. He wasn't what she'd term tender, which was a quality she rated, and he was attentive really because he could afford to be – flowers and gifts and nice dinners in upmarket restaurants. But he was very good at sex, and it was obvious that he thought Petra was very good at sex. He liked sex a lot and he liked lots of it and it flattered Petra that she appeared to turn him on so much and it was a thrill for her to take credit for his libido and his satisfaction.
So he fucked her rudely and quickly on his sofa and she thought to herself that, though her knee was being scuffled painfully against the fabric because he was taking her from behind, if they had been in missionary then both her sore heels would have suffered anyway. So it was OK. It was good, wasn't it, as he humped into her, his hand between her legs fiddling around for her clitoris. As he came, his mouth was at her ear and his gasps and groaning turned her on more than his cock or his hands and she moved herself urgently so that she came too.
They lay in a post-orgasmic, drunken slump.
‘Nice fuck,’ Rob said at length, easing himself off her. ‘Petra,’ he said sternly, ‘pop socks?’
‘You weren't meant to see,’ she said with a coy smile, ‘but you were in a rush to have me.’
He raised his eyebrow and shook his head. ‘Sometimes I think of you as so refreshingly quirky – but sometimes I think you're just odd. Come on, girl. Bed-time. And dear God, don't go walkabout tonight.’ He locked his front door and locked the key in his briefcase which had a combination code Petra didn't know.
But she did walk. A couple of hours after they'd fallen asleep she'd left the bed and walked into the wall where she thought there was a doorway as she assumed she was at her flat.
‘For fuck's sake,’ Rob said, not that Petra could hear him. He found her in his sitting room, standing stock-still. He turned her shoulders and gave her a little shove every few steps.
‘Petra, I can't be doing with this.’ She looked at him directly, her eyes vacant though she spoke at him.
‘I know what you mean,’ she said flatly.
‘I doubt it,’ Rob said back though he knew they weren't conversing.
‘But I wouldn't agree with you about Gordon Brown.’
She made to turn back to the sitting room but he steered her to the bedroom and she lay down without a murmur.
‘Sorry, babe,’ he said, ‘but I'm fucking knackered.’ And he took a tie from his cupboard, binding it around her wrist and securing it to the bedpost.
Chapter Six
Petra's knee healed faster than the blisters so she continued to wear her Birkenstock sandals with socks to the studio all week, and still had to wear her pop socks and slippers when she saw Rob a couple of evenings later. I'm wearing pop socks again, she advised him, so if you want to do unmentionably rude things to me, can you give me warning so I can take them off first. Rob had called her a little hussy – much to her delight. And in the event, she left her socks on and they had sex energetically while he slapped her buttocks and called her a naughty naughty girl. When she woke the next morning, though her buttocks felt decidedly tingly it was her left wrist which felt really sore and when she looked at it, it was red; scorched like a burn. She showed it to Rob who'd said, Don't you remember me pinning you down as I rogered you senseless? However Petra couldn't remember, precisely. But the sex had been kinky and mostly in the dark and perhaps all that spanking had distracted her, so maybe he had. As she showered, she did quietly consider how, as good as they were at sex, it would be nice if she and Rob could be a little better at the bits in between. But she quickly washed away the notion that, quite possibly, it was beyond Rob's natural personality to loll about chatting idly, or to hold hands whilst walking, or to make love rather than always fuck.
‘Petra, what have you done to your wrist?’ Gina asked her in the studio.
Petra pulled her sleeve down but gave Gina and Kitty and Eric a saucy lick of her lips. ‘Rob's a bit of a tiger,’ she giggled, sashaying out to the toilet.
‘He's a bit of a prat,’ Eric said dryly when Petra was out of earshot.
‘He's a lot of a prat,’ Gina defined.
‘I don't like it,’ Kitty said darkly. ‘Petra is naturally gentle – physically and emotionally. I'm sorry, but I don't like to think of someone being rough with her.’
‘She can look after herself,’ Eric snapped because actually he wished he'd come out with Kitty's insight.
‘No, Eric. I can look after myself,’ Kitty said. ‘Petra was born someone to be made love to – I'm someone born to fuck.’
Gina giggled. ‘Kitty, you are outrageous. You're putting me off my work.’
Kitty shrugged, her skeins of blue-black hair snaking around her shoulders like a latter-day Medusa. ‘Sorry, Gina,’ she said, ‘but I do have authority to speak. I've had more sex with more people than all the hyphens in the double-barrelled surnames in your street.’
Gina giggled again. ‘Rob is a prat – but it's not for us to say so. Anyway, Petra is very fond of him. And she's really set on making this relationship last.’
‘Even if it doesn't necessarily work,’ Eric sighed. ‘Christ.’
‘True,’ said Kitty, ‘but if I think he's hurting her, then no one's bloody gagging me. Silence has no place in the shadow of violence.’
Both Eric and Gina quietly hoped that this was the end of the matter and that Petra would not come into work with marks on her again. Neither of them fancied Rob's chances a
gainst Kitty.
‘I'm taking Charlton's piece back to him,’ Petra announced when she came in again. She showed them the ankh pendant she had fashioned out of gold according to Charlton's precise design; Celtic ornament enlivening the surface. ‘Does anybody want anything?’
‘Can you pop into Bellore for me?’ Gina asked. ‘They phoned to say my turquoise is in – it's all paid for.’
‘And I need some 4mm setting strip,’ said Kitty. ‘Can you lay out for me and I'll pay you back?’
‘Anything else? Eric?’
‘Oh go on, twist my arm – I'll have a cappuccino,’ Eric said. ‘But better make it a skinny one – my belt was tight this morning. Do you think I've gained weight?’
Petra raised her eyes at Kitty and Gina and left them to deal with Eric's neuroses while she went about her errands.
On one side only of Hatton Garden there is a line of trees which bow subtly towards the kerb like some kind of benign, eco-friendly security grille. It is on this side, about halfway down, that Charlton Squire has the original of his two jewellery galleries. The other, opened last year, is off New Bond Street in the West End. Like Electrum in South Molton Street, Charlton Squire Gallery is revered as a hotbed boutique of cutting-edge talent. However, there's a price to pay for such innovation in precious metals and gems and designs and it's high; the pieces for sale are marketed meticulously as luxury goods for those who can afford them. There's also a price to pay by the jewellers whom Charlton chooses to exhibit at his gallery and that is hefty commission charges. However, to exhibit at Charlton Squire means access to wealthy clients and occasional exposure in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair.
