by Susan Lewis
‘Oh my God,’ she murmured.
Smiling, Madeleine lowered her head. Her face was flushed and her skin still tingling, but she was apparently unaware of the extraordinary effect she had had on Deidre. But though Deidre’s mind was still in excited confusion, her manner was composed as she said, ‘You have exquisite bone structure, Madeleine. Do you suffer with spots at all?’
‘No, I don’t!’ Madeleine retorted testily.
Deidre raised a hand. ‘Plenty do,’ she explained, ‘though you’d never know it. And how about the skin on the rest of your body? Any blemishes, birthmarks, warts . . .’
‘Warts! You must be joking. Only old people get them . . . don’t they?’
Deidre’s face was alive with amusement as she slowly shook her head. The girl was proving to be the most fascinating paradox she’d ever encountered – one moment steeped in the erotic sensuousness of her beauty, the next, gauchely naive.
‘Well, I haven’t got any,’ Madeleine said sulkily. ‘I’ll take my clothes off if you like, and prove it.’
‘No, that really won’t be necessary,’ Deidre laughed. ‘Unless you want to do nude modelling, of course.’
Madeleine’s face lit up. ‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ she enthused. ‘I want to be on Page Three, and in the men’s magazines and all that.’
‘You do?’ Deidre’s surprise was genuine. That was one little snippet of information that hadn’t reached her about Madeleine Deacon. ‘Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. But what about fashion? Does that interest you?’
Madeleine shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Then, more definitely. ‘Yes, it does. You mean like catwalks and all that?’
‘Catwalks, and magazine spreads, cosmetics maybe, perfume, sun tan lotion, cars, soft drinks – the list is endless. It’s just a matter of introducing you to the right photographers, the right directors, the right clients . . . We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. How old are you, Madeleine?’
‘Twenty.’ Madeleine’s voice was vague, she was still struggling to take in everything Deidre had just said.
‘Mm, a little old to be . . .’
‘Old!’
‘. . . starting out, but again, I don’t anticipate that being a problem. Some girls have already reached the top by the time they’re your age. I take it it’s to the top you’re hoping to go?’
‘Oh yes,’ Madeleine confirmed. ‘I’ve always wanted to be famous.’
Deidre couldn’t help being touched by such guileless honesty. ‘Then we’ll have to see what we can do, won’t we?’ she smiled.
Madeleine blinked several times, and Deidre stood up and walked over to the coffee percolator. ‘I’m a little concerned about your desire to be on Page Three,’ she said. ‘Have you given any thought to the way that kind of exposure might affect your credibility? Milk or sugar?’
Madeleine shook her head. ‘Neither, thank you. What do you mean, my credibility?’
Deidre let out a deep breath, then walking back with two cups of coffee, she smiled as she handed one to Madeleine. ‘Well, the centrefold of, say, Penthouse or Play-boy carries a great deal more prestige than page three of The Sun, wouldn’t you agree?’
Madeleine shrugged. As far as she could see there wasn’t any difference, except that you showed everything in one and only the top half in the other. She said so. ‘And,’ she added, ‘a lot more people buy The Sun.’
‘Well I can’t argue with that,’ Deidre laughed.
Madeleine put down her cup and leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. ‘I’ve always wanted to be on Page Three,’ she said gravely. ‘Always, ever since I’ve known there was one.’
Again Deidre sighed. ‘If your heart’s set on it . . .’ She walked over to her desk and picked up a foolscap pad and pen. She wrote for several minutes, and though she was aware from the jangling bracelets that Madeleine was moving around behind her, she didn’t turn round until she’d finished. When she did, her eyes flew open, and for a moment she was unable to find the breath to speak.
‘See, no warts,’ Madeleine declared.
‘Good God,’ Deidre muttered, then had to turn away before she burst out laughing. ‘Well,’ she said, once she had herself sufficiently under control, ‘now I can see why you’re so keen to do nude modelling. Your body is flawless, my dear. Walk to the window, turn slowly, then walk back again, will you?’
‘Of course,’ Madeleine said happily.
As she sauntered across the wide office she glanced around at the framed posters of magazine front covers. To her, the vacant eyes seemed to ooze envy, and her mouth curved in a superior smile. She was quite oblivious of the fact that the look she had shown Deidre earlier had been more than enough to seal her destiny; as far as Madeleine was concerned, it was her body that was her magic. And now that it was uncovered, she was impervious to everything beyond the supreme glory of her most intimate charms. She looked down at her breasts, and touched her fingers lightly against the smooth skin of her buttocks. There was only one thing in the world that could exceed the pleasure she gained from looking at her body, and that was Paul making love to it. As she thought about him now, a dull, pulsating ache spread through her loins, and she wanted him with a hunger so acute that for a moment she forgot where she was and her fingers began to caress the ache from her nipples. Then she looked up and saw that she had reached the window. As she looked down into the street, she suddenly wanted this meeting to be over. She wanted to go to him, to lie beneath him and feel his thighs against hers, to hold him in her hand and feel the hardness of him, to have him deep inside her, pounding against her until he wrenched the orgasm from her body in the way no other man had ever been able to do. Nothing mattered except him.
A brisk knock on the door brought her back to her senses, but as she turned round the light in her eyes suddenly flared again.
‘Ah, Roy,’ Deidre said, her voice brimming with laughter at the look on his face. ‘Come and meet Madeleine Deacon. Madeleine, this is one of my partners, Roy Welland. He handles all the press and publicity for the agency. Madeleine was just displaying her talents,’ she informed Roy.
Roy’s eyes remained fixed to Madeleine as he closed the door. Aware that Deidre was watching him, he tried to look away, but there was an aura about the girl that was so compelling it seemed to draw him right into her. In all his forty-four years he had never felt such urgency, nor such helplessness. And then the feverish light in her eyes receded and it was as though a spell had been broken. He flicked a glance at Deidre, then at last he managed a smile and extended his hand as if he were introduced to naked women every day of his life. ‘How do you do?’ he croaked. Then clearing his throat, he tried again.
Deidre choked, and knowing she was going to howl with laughter any second, started to forage in her desk in an effort to control herself. Roy and Madeleine turned to watch her, waiting for her to say something, but though she tried several times, it was impossible. In the end Roy’s lean, pock-marked face broke into a grin, and lifting one of Madeleine’s arms he cried, ‘What can I say? Except that if you can switch that look on and off at random, then the world’s your oyster.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Deidre. ‘What do you say?’
‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ Deidre agreed, her self-control still teetering very close to the edge.
Madeleine looked from one to the other, not entirely sure what they were talking about. Then, shrugging, she laughed and said, ‘So you’ll take me on?’
‘Without a doubt,’ Roy answered.
Madeleine turned to Deidre. ‘All we have to do now,’ Deidre said, ‘is convince the photographers.’
Roy sucked in his breath and started to shake his head. ‘Yes, well, that is something else altogether. I wonder . . .’
‘I’ve got some money,’ Madeleine interrupted. ‘I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I’ve got ten thousand pounds to get me started.’
Deidre’s tongue formed a lump in her cheek as she pondered this for a moment. She�
�d been wondering when Madeleine would make the offer, though now she’d met her, she knew she’d have taken her on whether she made it or not. She jerked herself abruptly to her feet and said, ‘Get dressed, my dear. You must be getting cold.’
Avoiding Roy’s eyes, she waited until Madeleine was pushing her arms into her jacket, then walked to the door. ‘Leave your cheque with my secretary,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you in a few days.’
Madeleine was winding her scarf round her neck, but at that her arms froze. ‘I’m not that stupid,’ she declared.
Deidre’s smile was one of offended astonishment. ‘What on earth do you mean, Madeleine?’
Madeleine’s face had turned pink. ‘Well . . .’
‘Oh, I see,’ Deidre laughed. ‘You think we’re going to steal the money.’
‘No,’ Madeleine answered hastily. ‘I just meant that . . .’
Deidre glanced at Roy as she put an arm round Madeleine’s shoulders. ‘Let me tell you something, Madeleine,’ she chuckled. ‘From just this first meeting I already know that you have qualities that are extremely rare. Roy and I have another partner, Dario – he’s a photographer – and together we are going to tap your qualities, and take you to the very top. You have my word on that. Now, I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something for you.’
‘When do you think that will be?’ Madeleine ventured.
‘Soon enough.’ Deidre opened the door and stood aside to let Madeleine pass. ‘Oh, and Madeleine . . .’ Madeleine stopped. ‘The newspaper nudes. Shall we set ourselves a deadline? Say, one month?’
‘One month!’ Madeleine gasped, and it was only with a supreme effort that she managed not to screech with joy.
Deidre nodded, then watched while Madeleine handed a cheque to her secretary. She smiled as Madeleine turned back to say goodbye, then closed the door.
Her green eyes were brimming with mirth as she turned to look at Roy. ‘I wish you could have seen your face!’ she laughed.
Roy’s mouth twisted in a wry smile, and he shook his head. ‘It’s been a lot of years since the sight of a naked woman took my breath away like that,’ he admitted, ‘but did you see that look?’
‘Oh yes, I saw it,’ Deidre answered as she walked over to the window and looked down at the Brompton Road. ‘So what do you think?’
He dropped onto the sofa and lifted his feet onto the coffee table. ‘That it’s very obliging of her to finance herself.’
Deidre threw back her head and laughed. Then casting her arms wide, as if ready for an embrace, she said, ‘And how easy that’s going to make it. Tell me, how famous shall we make her?’
‘If she keeps coming up with that sort of money, then as famous as you like.’
Deidre looked down into the street again and smiled as, three floors below, Madeleine sauntered out of the building. When she turned back, her eyes held that catlike quality he’d come to know so well.
They both looked round as the door opened and Anne, Deidre’s secretary, walked in.
‘Did you get everything?’ Deidre asked.
Her secretary nodded, then flicking open her notepad, she said, ‘She’s staying at Blake’s Hotel with her boyfriend. His name’s Paul O’Connell – a writer, by all accounts. Unpublished.’
Deidre looked at Roy, a question in her eyes, and he nodded.
‘They moved up from the West Country five weeks ago,’ Anne went on. ‘When she was in Bristol she worked for a strip-o-gram agency and shared a flat with a cousin. Her aunt brought her up from the age of eight – her parents were killed in a plane crash when she was ten.’
Deidre frowned. ‘Poor Madeleine,’ she murmured.
‘And the money?’ Roy asked.
Anne shook her head. ‘It might belong to the boyfriend, we’re still checking him out.’ She turned back to Deidre. ‘Shall I give her details to the bookers?’
‘Yes,’ Deidre nodded. ‘And I think we should inform Dario. Is he at the studio?’
‘As far as I know,’ Anne replied. ‘Would you like me to get him for you?’
‘No. I’ll do it myself.’
When Anne had gone, Deidre sat at her desk and picked up the direct dial phone. Roy was watching her closely, and as she returned his gaze, her shrewd green eyes mirrored the smile in his.
Blake’s Hotel, in Roland Gardens, South Kensington, was where the very rich and very famous stayed – Madeleine had read that in Elle magazine. So, five weeks ago, when they had arrived at Paddington Station, that was where she and Paul had headed.
For forty-eight hours they’d made love in the Manhattan Suite and fantasised about what they would do with the money. First stop, when they resurfaced on the third day, had been Coutts Bank in the Strand, because Madeleine had heard somewhere that the Queen banked there. Paul let her handle everything, though he’d made sure the account was opened in joint names. It wasn’t that he intended to steal any of the money, it was just that he, like the stunned cashiers and account manager, knew that three quarters of a million pounds couldn’t possibly live in a current account. So, for the past month, while Madeleine had been out shopping and trying to find herself an agent, Paul, together with his accountants, had been paying regular visits to Coutts. Madeleine would probably never know about her wise investments, because it had been arranged that if the current account ever looked like falling below the stipulated minimum of two thousand pounds, stocks and shares would be sold and the account replenished. And so on, until she had spent it all – which Paul had no doubt she would.
To begin with, the mews house in Holland Park was going to set her back three hundred and fifty thousand, probably more by the time she’d finished dishing out bribes to estate agents and potential gazumpers. He was amused at the way she used her money to cut through red tape, and fascinated by how little persuasion was needed to make people take it. There was no use telling her that half the time it wasn’t necessary, she had it fixed in her head that everything had to be bought. He’d have given a great deal to see Deidre Crabb’s face when Madeleine made the offer she couldn’t refuse, because, unlike Madeleine, he had heard of Deidre Crabb and knew she handled only the cream of the crop. His guess was that Deidre would show her the door and Madeleine would debase herself even further by shrieking a few obscenities. He spent some time considering exactly what she might say, then, bored by it, he went back to his perusal of the Writer’s Handbook.
Paul O’Connell was the only son of Hammond O’Connell, financier, hotelier and patron of the arts. He had been what one might term an over-privileged child. His parents, already in their forties when he was born, had indulged his every whim, and after their death his aunt had continued in the same fashion. Now she was dead too, and the combined income from his inherited estates would do him very well indeed, should he care to avail himself of it. But for the past two years he hadn’t touched it; being rich was something he’d always known – he wanted to try something different. He was twenty-eight when he moved to Bristol with a sports bag and fifty pounds.
He’d lived off several women before Marian Deacon saved him from being kicked onto the street – at least, that’s what she thought. In fact he had been lodging with a woman in St. George whose husband was working in the Middle East. The arrangement had been quite satisfactory until the woman started to become too involved, and when he’d called her from London and she had told him she’d asked her husband for a divorce, he had known it was time for him to get out. That was when he’d rather cleverly manipulated Marian into inviting him to live with her and Madeleine.
From the start he had set out to make Marian love him, believing that her gratitude and adoration, and his response to it, would make a good study. It had, for a while. What was more, he had grown reasonably fond of her, had even found himself stimulated by her, until Madeleine, and the arrival of the cheque, had provided material for an exceptional exploitation of human nature that he simply couldn’t resist. Nothing excited his writer’s mind more than making people behave out of
character. He excelled at it, throwing himself and those around him into unexpected and unnatural situations until, with the detachment of a stranger, he sat back to observe individual responses to shock, or grief, or pleasure. His detachment, even from his own feelings, was something he exulted in, as was his ability to manipulate people; occasionally he wondered just how far he was prepared to go for the sake of his craft.
Suddenly he threw his book across the room. He’d always had everything he wanted, everything, but getting published was proving difficult – and tiresome.
The phone rang. He and Madeleine had agreed that she should be the only one to take phone calls, and since she wasn’t there, he didn’t answer. This was a precaution Madeleine had come up with, just in case Marian should find out where they were. When it stopped ringing, he wished he’d picked it up. If it had been Marian he’d have liked to talk to her. And what would Madeleine say to that?
He laughed aloud. Simple Madeleine. So pliable, so vain. Getting her to steal that money – and her cousin’s boyfriend, he mustn’t forget that – had been so easy it was almost disappointing. If he thought about it long enough, he guessed he might feel sorry for Marian, but it was all part of life’s tapestry and one day, when the time was right, he might even go back to her.
Several minutes later, Madeleine walked in. ‘I,’ she said, dropping her handbag on the bed and spinning round, ‘have an agent. And it is none other than Deidre Crabb herself.’
Knowing it would please her, he didn’t hide his surprise.
‘What did I tell you?’ she went on. ‘Everyone has her price, even Deidre Crabb. So how about that?’ He got up from the sofa and strolled over to the bed. Madeleine turned as he passed her. ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ she asked, as he lay down.
