by Clare Naylor
“You have the bottle of wine?” Mirri asked Jonah in a hushed voice.
“Sure do.” He waved the bottle that they’d brought from the restaurant in the air and reached a hand out for Mirri’s irresistibly apple-shaped bottom.
“Okay, come with me. I can see them having dinner in the house, so be as quiet as possible and stay in the shadows, okay?”
“Terrific, I go home with an older woman and we behave like teenagers. I love it,” Jonah said, moving his hand up and hooking it into the awesome curve of Mirri’s waist. God, they didn’t make women like this anymore, he thought. They were all skinny and sinewy these days, with muscles where only men were supposed to have muscles and hard little tummies that seemed to be made for keeping men at bay, not tracing a lazy finger over. No, Mirri was like a piece of soft, slightly overripe fruit, he thought longingly.
“You sit over there,” Mirri said, breaking free from his hold and taking Bébé by the leash up toward the house. “I’m going to sneak in and put him to bed. I’ll be back soon.” She disappeared stealthily into the dark and headed for the house, bypassing the orangery, where clinking sounds of china were mingling with chatter as Kate and Leonard cleared away the table. She held her breath and hoped they didn’t suddenly appear in the kitchen as she was tiptoeing through it.
Moments later, after Mirri had deposited Bébé in her bedroom, she reappeared with a packet of Gauloise and no shoes. She found an old hammock hanging in a far corner of the garden and sat down in it.
“Here, you must be very careful not to fall out of it,” she instructed him. “And if you do then you must not scream.”
“How come you’re so afraid of being caught?” Jonah asked as he lowered himself carefully down beside her.
“I’m not afraid. But if I am caught then I will have to join in and talk when really I just want to be here.” She lit up a cigarette and inhaled as if her life depended on it. “I hope you are as good as you look.”
“Well, so do I,” said Jonah, taking Mirri’s half-smoked Gauloise from her and dropping it to the ground. “I’d hate to disappoint, madame.”
As Kate wandered back toward her shed she was sure that she could smell cigarette smoke and decided that it must be coming from the camp of photographers who seemed to have taken up permanent residence on the pavement outside the house. She even felt a little sorry for the woman who had stood her up for dinner. It must be pretty hellish having twenty men baying for your photograph. Men who would be particularly pleased if she were to show up looking raddled and ancient—because that way they’d be able to sell their photos to the newspapers for so much more. A glimpse of cellulite or a turkey neck, even if it was just a trick of the light or a bad angle, was so much more to the general public’s taste.
“Sshhhh.” Kate heard a thud and then a low-pitched male laugh somewhere in the bushes to her right. She stopped in her tracks and was about to launch herself into the house and inform the police that some gentlemen of the press were trespassing in her garden—when she heard the inimitable sound of Mirabelle Moncur.
“Oh that is very good. I like that,” she was saying in her husky voice. Kate stood stock-still and peered in the direction of the voices. There, beneath the cherry tree, where Kate had hung her hammock only last week, she saw something glowing in the pitch dark. She crept in closer and noticed that it was a lit cigarette butt that somebody hadn’t extinguished. God, Kate hated people who discarded their cigarettes all over the place. But just as she was about to march over to Mirri and ask her to pick it up, she heard another sound that suggested she might not want to march anywhere other than the opposite direction at the moment. It was the satisfied groan of a man. So instead of taking a step closer, Kate crept away, making a mental note to ensure in the morning that the cigarette butt had gone. And if not she’d take up the matter with Leonard. It was a filthy habit.
Once back in her shed, Kate went to shut the window that she’d left open before she’d gone out. But as she approached it she realized that not only were the noises of Mirabelle Moncur and her lover being carried very efficiently on the breeze—right into her shed—but she also had top-dollar, ringside seats for the show.
“Oh, hell,” she said as the light from the neighbor’s bathroom, which overlooked the garden, perfectly illuminated the scene in the hammock.
“Oh baby, that is great,” the man, who was lying back on the hammock, with his trousers in the nearby herbaceous border, was saying. Mirri, rather unsurprisingly, was kneeling on the grass and had her head planted firmly in his lap. Facedown. Kate, who was squeamish even about couples who made out on escalators in the tube station, almost let out a yell of disgust, but managed at the last moment to suppress it. She wasn’t quick enough, however, to prevent a startled “Fucking hell” from flying out of her mouth when she saw the face of Jonah Sinclair bob up for air. She knew instantly that it was him because not only was he more famous than the prime minister, but his was also the same face she had seen on a movie poster at the bus stop only yesterday as she wandered through Primrose Hill. It was indeed the face she gazed at every time she went to the loo. It peered out at her from the cover of Heat magazine, which lay on the floor of her bathroom. But though Kate did her best to duck down beneath the windowsill so that she couldn’t be seen, it was too late.
“Oh, Kate, hi there. I’m glad you’re home,” Mirri said loudly, barely looking around, and without stopping doing that thing she was doing to Jonah. “I want you to start on Bébé early tomorrow. I have to go shopping in the afternoon.”
“Okay,” Kate said in alarm as she turned her head away from the spectacle before her and darted toward the bed, where she sat down with a thud. “Sure.”
“Okay, eight o’clock,” Mirri confirmed. “Good night.” And without another word she got back to business, leaving Kate hyperventilating at the trauma of being busted. Watching someone, and an old person at that, have sex.
She wondered whether she ought to turn on the light. Or whether she should draw the curtains. Certainly she ought to draw the curtains, she decided, and twitched as silently as possible back over to the window.
“I’m so glad that some things you read in the press are true,” Jonah Sinclair was murmuring as he slipped his tongue into Mirri’s ear.
“You like?” Mirri laughed as she pulled her skirt up to her waist and, with perfect sleight of hand, removed Jonah’s boxer shorts.
“I bloody well love,” Jonah groaned just beyond her window.
“Oh no,” Kate breathed to herself as she gathered a curtain in either hand. But before she could pull them together and put an end to the sight, the human pretzel that was Mirri and Jonah had spilled out of the hammock and onto the ground. And horrifyingly for Kate it was compelling viewing on a par with suddenly realizing that you’ve been allocated a porn site on cable by mistake. You would never order it yourself but you can’t help having a sneaky peek. Especially if the stars are two of the most sexually desirable, and probably sexually experienced, human beings on the planet. Albeit one might be just a bit past her use-by date.
“Yuck,” Kate said, as she bent down a bit so she could see more clearly just which leg belonged to which sex. What she was witnessing was like a how-to lesson in carnality. Mirri and Jonah were now standing against the cherry tree, Jonah going hard at it as Mirri licked his armpits. Kate thought this a bit gross, but it certainly seemed to be doing the trick for Jonah, whose buttocks were pumping up and down as enthusiastically as a toddler on a trampoline. And when Mirri then slithered down the tree with a satisfied series of gasps and decided to pay a little more attention to Jonah’s indefatigable erection, Kate had an overwhelming urge to make notes.
But she didn’t. Instead she just watched very carefully as if studying for a biology paper, and vowed to practice every lick and stroke on Jake one day, possibly in another lifetime, but hey, even if they came back as ants she’d be sure to blow his mind. She watched and learned, before realizing that the glass was
steamed up and she was probably a pervert. At which point she snatched the curtains shut and tiptoed to the sink to brush her teeth in the dark.
Chapter Four
The next morning Kate was woken by a colossal thudding on her shed door. It didn’t take more than a split second for her to fathom that it was Mirri Moncur and that Kate had overslept. But not by accident. Just before she had fallen asleep last night, Kate had rather belligerently decided that she was not going to abide by orders issued in flagrante delicto from a hammock containing a handsome, naked young actor. She simply didn’t see any reason why she should kowtow to Mirabelle Moncur’s needs. Especially when she hadn’t turned up for dinner last night and had failed to let Leonard know.
Kate was also just a bit peevish about the fact that Mirri was having great, tree-banging sex, and that she herself had gone to bed in a pair of earplugs and a bra. The earplugs because the “wow”s and the “again, again”s were not conducive to sleep, and the bra because as she’d pulled on her nightie she had suddenly noticed that her boobs were a bit farther down her chest from where she usually found them. In a panic she remembered that Marilyn Monroe slept in a bra to avoid such a horrifying eventuality as this. So Kate followed suit. She supposed she could ask Mirri, whose tits seemed, like time and tide, to wait for no man, for some tips in the keeping-your-breasts-aloft department, but that would have entailed talking to the oversexed old tart.
“Bugger off,” Kate shouted at the pounding outside.
“It is eight twenty-five. I waited twenty-five minutes before I came to find you.” Mirri’s voice rang out like a French foghorn.
“Well, you can wait even longer. I don’t open until nine,” Kate barked and pulled the duvet over her head.
“I say to you last night, eight o’clock. You say fine. This is unprofessional.”
“Well, you crossed the boundaries of professional behavior when you decided to remove your dress on my doorstep and reenact the bloody Kama Sutra,” Kate yelled back. But instead of a brick through the window she was met by sounds of merriment behind the door. Kate ignored it for all of five seconds, then couldn’t contain herself any longer. “What’s so funny?” she snapped, and sat up in bed.
“You watched us.” Mirri had sat down on the doorstep and lit a cigarette. “It was a good performance, non?”
“Don’t be so disgusting,” Kate spat, with the disapproval of a Sunday school teacher at a wife-swapping party.
“No wonder you are tired. You lay awake all night thinking about it.” Mirri laughed. At which point Kate got out of bed, stomped toward her door, and threw it open.
“Would you please put that thing out? It stinks.” Kate glared at Mirri and her cigarette. “And for your information I would rather have burned my hair than watch that pathetic display outside my window last night. Next time I’ll call the police.”
Mirri casually stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “Then I shall return to my room until nine, when you prefer to begin working. But you must stop being so English about making love. It is too boring,” Mirri said, before she pushed off back to the house without a hint of emotion. Leaving Kate looking like a rhinoceros about to charge—all dust and fury. The only difference being that rhinos don’t wear bras under their nightdresses, Kate thought with a cringe as she looked down.
Eventually Kate pried herself from bed and made her way to the house with her sketch pad and pencils—but only for Leonard. She didn’t care a bit about Mirri Moncur or her lion cub. In fact, this morning she cared about very little. She had slumped into one of those black pits of despair that seemed to be part of the landscape of life with Jake. They were the times when he vanished from her life for days on end. And these were the days that she barely survived. The days she wished that she could just sleep through and not have to feel. She knew that the sensible thing to do would be to resolve, quite simply, never to see him again. But she also knew that it was the time she was least likely to make the break—she was weak and diminished and she knew that when he did finally reemerge, she’d be so relieved that she would forget the misery. She often wondered, as she did this morning, how she had become involved in such a dysfunctional relationship. She’d never have believed herself capable of it before she met Jake. It was something that insecure, idiotic women in magazines or television talk shows did. It wasn’t something that an attractive woman with a job and friends should have given the time of day to. But what she’d never understood before was how you could actually love someone who behaved so carelessly toward you. She didn’t understand it now, either; she just knew that she didn’t want to spend another minute without Jake in her life. But for Leonard’s sake and for the sake of not allowing her life to be completely governed by Jake, she got up and, tucking her cell phone into her jeans pocket, went to find Mirri Moncur.
Kate arrived at Leonard’s kitchen door and rapped out a perfunctory knock before pushing it open and letting herself in. She and Leonard had lived this way for a while now. His house was open day and night to Kate, and he was very fond of saying, “Mi casa, su casa, my dear.” Actually he applied this expression to everything from cornflakes to friends. What was Leonard’s was, by extension, Kate’s. Similarly she’d have been delighted to share everything she owned with Leonard. Though it hadn’t come to that yet—he had little need for either combat pants or pencils, and though he had taken a queeny shine to a pair of Janis Joplin’s cowboy boots that Jake had bought for her on eBay, they would never have fit him. So Kate merely shared her tales of youthful misspending and occasionally her magazines with Leonard. And one day, when she had a palazzo in Venice and caskets of jewels, she’d share those with him, too. Though jewels weren’t really his thing. Leonard was not camp in an Elton John way; rather he was discreetly appreciative of all beautiful things and had exquisite taste. There was nothing of the rhinestone poof about him.
“Leonard? It’s me.” Kate poked her head into the kitchen. The house was deserted.
“Through here,” Leonard called out from his study across the hall. Kate looked about slightly cautiously in case Bébé was off his leash and prowling the corridors. Or indeed to see if Mirri was off her leash. Though in fairness it was Kate who had been unreasonable and pathetic this morning. Kate had been practicing a bit of an apology and planned to deliver it with as much grace as she could muster.
“Come in, come in.” Leonard was sitting behind his desk and stood up when Kate walked in. “Tea? Coffee? Sherry?” he inquired as Kate gave him a small hug and then perched on the edge of a leather library chair.
“Thanks, but I’ve got to speak to Mirabelle about this portrait,” she explained as Leonard seized the moment and poured himself a small sherry.
“Ah, yes, the poor thing was very apologetic about not making it to dinner last night. She ran into an old friend and got carried away.”
“I’ll say,” said Kate when Leonard’s back was turned.
“Sorry?”
“That’s a shame.” Kate smiled. “Still, we had a lovely time.”
“Absolutely we did.” Leonard settled back down to do his work. “Can’t possibly look my accounts in the eye without one of these,” he said as he raised his sherry glass.
“Quite right, too.” Kate stood up. “Have fun with your accounts.” And with that she went out into the hall and up the stairs to the top floor.
“Ah, come in, come in.” Mirri opened the door with a flourish as Kate waited hesitantly. It wasn’t the reception she’d expected. Mirri was smiling, warm, and dressed in a flowing sky-blue caftan. Kate had imagined that the only thing that would be blue would be the air—with a stream of abuse for Kate’s rudeness this morning. But Mirri seemed not to even remember, let alone mind. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Good, well, here I am,” Kate said, somewhat disarmed. “The thing is, Miss Moncur, about this morning, I’m sorry. It was unprofessional of me not to turn up on time. You’re right.”
“Oh, this is fine.” Mirri swept Kate in
to a chair in the corner next to where Bébé was sleeping on the carpet. “I understand that you are just jealous of what happened last night.”
“Jealous?” Kate wondered if she’d misunderstood Mirri’s French accent.
“It was not diplomatic of me to make love near your house.” Mirri sat down on the bed and waved her hand dismissively. “I understand.”
“I wasn’t jealous,” Kate said.
“Darling, of course you must be. You were with a slug of a man when I came in the other day. Quite charmless.”
“I’m sorry?” Kate asked, not able to believe that Mirri was serious for a moment.
“Don’t be sorry. I felt sorry for you.”
“What?”
“You could do better.” Mirri smiled at Kate. “But enough of that. Let’s discuss my petit chat. He is after all why we are here.”
“You just called my boyfriend a slug.”
“He was your boyfriend?” Mirri scowled. “Then why didn’t he behave as if he was? He took the sheet from you. He didn’t defend you when I said your paintings were average, and he didn’t throw me out. This is not the kind of man you want for a boyfriend.”
“I really don’t think that it’s any of your business.” Kate’s cheeks had begun to glow pink with anger. Who on earth did this old cow think she was? And what was she doing noticing all those things about the way Jake behaved? If Kate spent her whole time not noticing them, then why should anyone else?
“No, you’re right. The sex must be amazing. For you to put up with this slug. Am I right?” Mirri wandered over to the mirror and began piling her hair on top of her head. More as an act of vanity than hairstyling.
“I refuse to talk about this any longer.” Kate got up from the chair and went to sit beside the lion cub on the floor. She was shaking with fury. “So were you thinking oil or watercolor?”
