Evie watched him approach, his bare feet padding on the floor, his cock already rising, looking large and rosy when the rest of him was so pale.
‘It’s true what they say about thinner men, ’ she said as he joined her under the water.
‘What do they say about thin men?’ Lawrence asked. He bent over to pick up the shower gel, and Evie licked her lips at the sight of his ass, small and plump, dusted with golden hairs.
‘Their dicks look bigger, ’ she said naughtily.
For an instant she thought of Benny, so huge – so obese, to be honest – that she had to lift layers of fat to even find his dick, and the memory was so unpleasant that she shoved it right back again where it came from, and told it to stay there. There was one upside to this whole shitty mess, and that was that she’d never have to play Find The Needle In The Haystack with Benny’s dick ever again.
‘Oh yeah?’ Lawrence squeezed some shower gel onto his palms and started soaping her breasts. ‘And do they feel bigger, too?’
‘I’ll tell you when it’s inside me, ’ Evie said, pushing her hair back with both hands, suddenly wanting Lawrence’s cock inside her so badly that she felt she couldn’t wait another second for it.
Then she gasped, because Lawrence had gripped her hips and lifted her two feet into the air as easily as if she weighed nothing at all.
‘Jesus, you’re skin and bone, Evie, ’ he said, concerned. ‘Look at your hipbones! They’re poking out!’
Evie rolled her eyes.
‘I’ll eat afterwards, Lawrence, OK?’ she moaned. ‘Whatever vegan crap you want to feed me. Just fuck me now.’
Water was pouring down on her head. The room was filling with steam. Lawrence shifted her slightly, she looped her legs around him, and in one movement, he lowered her down on his cock. She moaned again, this time in utter satisfaction, locking her legs tighter around his back, leaning into him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
‘At least your being skinny makes this really easy, ’ Lawrence gasped into her neck as he raised and lowered her, thrusting up into her with each movement, deeper each time, so deep that Evie could think of nothing else but his cock driving inside her. ‘You don’t weigh anything . . .’
‘It does feel big, ’ she gasped back. ‘Really, really big . . .’
Lawrence didn’t answer. He just kept on fucking her, his skin slippery against hers, the water pouring down on both of them and Lawrence driving up inside her, and it was too much, too much, it was everything. Evie closed her eyes and gave herself over completely to what he was doing, trusting him to pull out in plenty of time, clinging to him, telling herself that the water and the sex would rinse off everything bad that had happened to her, be a new start that would wash her clean.
And as she started to come, she remembered that Autumn was in the apartment, and she started to scream, as loudly as she could, cries of encouragement and pleasure and triumph. Cries which she hoped to hell would rise over the noise of the water, penetrate the bathroom wall, and reach Autumn, making it impossible for her to concentrate on anything but listening to Evie and Lawrence fucking, Evie reaching climax over and over again, cries that would make it abundantly clear to Autumn that Lawrence was Evie’s and always would be, for as long as Evie wanted him. That Evie would be staying in Lawrence’s room, getting Lawrence off in an extremely wide variety of ways, as long as Evie felt like it, and there wasn’t a damn thing Autumn could do about it—
And just then, Lawrence hit her G-spot so perfectly that she came so hard she thought her head would explode, and she let out a scream that Autumn would have to be deaf, or hiding her head under the mattress, not to have heard. Somehow, the thought of Autumn listening, a helpless auditor to Evie and Lawrence’s pleasure, made the orgasm even stronger, the sex even more powerful.
Collapsing, boneless, on Lawrence’s shoulder, Evie smiled to herself. At least Autumn was good for something.
Chapter 7
‘Oh God, look at how much stuff I have!’ Lola wailed plaintively.
‘What am I going to do with it?’
She looked at her watch, an elegant slip of a thing by Breguet, platinum-strapped and diamond-faced.
‘I’ve only got a couple of hours left, ’ she said hopelessly.
‘Oh, they can’t just kick you out like that!’ exclaimed Madison, who had only arrived at Lola’s mews house twenty minutes ago.
‘Those men in the living-room are the lawyers for her stepmother, ’ Devon told Madison. ‘They’ve given Lo till four to get her things out.’
‘Jesus, ’ Madison breathed. Tall, with the wide shoulders of a swimmer, Madison always looked as though she could take on anyone or anything: she had the superb physical confidence some Americans possessed, nurtured on high-quality proteins and vitamins, stronger and brighter than the decadent old-world Europeans with their bad diets and worse teeth.
But even Madison couldn’t fight Carin’s lawyers. Lola’s hopes were all pinned on George Goldman, in New York, but George had said it might be a month at least before any decision was made on the trust-fund issue, and right now Carin controlled the purse strings. If she said Lola had to leave her house, then Lola had to leave.
Lola sank onto the pretty little mulberry velvet loveseat she’d had made for her bedroom window embrasure. She lifted the blind half an inch and peered out through the gap she’d made. As soon as one paparazzo below saw the blind moving, he started snapping, and the rest of them immediately followed suit, calling up to her like a whole group of East End Romeos after a single Juliet.
‘Lola, is that you?’
‘Lola, give us a last shot from your window, eh, babe?’
‘Come on, Lola, let’s have a look at you!’
Lola heaved a huge sigh, dropping the blind again.
‘To think I used to get cross when they didn’t want my photo, ’ she sighed.
‘Like when Dev was getting married, and they only ever wanted to snap her, ’ Georgia agreed. She flicked back her long red hair and shot Devon the saucy, not-wholly-friendly glance of a girl who hasn’t yet scored a rich or titled husband, looking at one who has. ‘But now that’s all changed, hasn’t it, Dev? No one wants the boring marrieds. Sexy singles are so much more interesting.’
Lola stared hopelessly at the huge pile of suitcases in the middle of the room. It was like a modern art installation.
‘Shoes take up so much room!’ she said.
‘God, tell me about it! I haven’t got a spare inch of room myself!’ Madison laughed, which Lola took to be a tactful way of saying that she couldn’t help Lola out by storing any of her cases.
‘I’d love to help, Lo, but I can’t, ’ Devon chipped in, widening her baby-blue eyes and tipping her head on one side to demonstrate how sincerely apologetic she was. ‘Piers will kill me if he finds out I’ve got any of your stuff in the attics.’
Lola turned to India, but the latter was already shaking her head.
‘I’m so sorry, Lola, I really am. I’ve had Tiggy camped out in the spare room for months, and that’s the only place I could possibly put all this.’
Damn, Lola thought meanly. She had really been hoping that India would offer. India, a size ten to twelve (huge, by the girls’ anorexic standards), wouldn’t fit into any of Lola’s clothes, so she would have been safer leaving them with her than anyone else.
‘I mean, ’ Georgia added with killing accuracy, ‘you don’t even know how long it’ll be before you have somewhere to live, do you? It could be ages.’
‘Georgia, ’ India said reproachfully.
‘Well, it’s true, ’ Georgia said, lighting up a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, but someone had to say it.’
Lola stared at Georgia, who was looking particularly striking today, her crimson lipstick setting off her white skin and red curly hair. Or maybe it was just that Georgia was flourishing in her enjoyment of Lola’s misfortune? With a sharp stab of remembered betrayal, Lola wondered whether it was Georgia who had sold that vi
deo of her doing coke to the tabloids. Someone had, after all, and Georgia did unabashedly enjoy her friends’ troubles . . .
‘Do you know anyone who’s got more space?’ Devon asked, curling up on the loveseat next to Lola and lighting up too. She gestured with her cigarette, an idea having just hit her, her blue eyes sparkling. ‘Maybe someone in the country!’
Yes, I do, Lola thought angrily. You. Your in-laws have a stately home the size of Monaco. You could fit my entire house in one of your barns and not even notice it was there.
But what was the point in saying it? Devon clearly wasn’t going to offer the ample storage facilities of Claverford Hall.
‘Doesn’t your mom live in the country?’ Madison asked, wandering over to the full-length mirror and examining her reflection critically.
‘My mother?’ Lola’s eyebrows shot up so high they nearly hit her hairline. ‘I haven’t talked to her in years!’
‘Well, maybe you should start, sweetie, ’ Madison said dryly.
Lola reached for one of Devon’s cigarettes. She had been trying to cut down, but the mention of her mother immediately made her want to shove the entire pack in her mouth and start inhaling.
‘She was really famous, wasn’t she?’ Georgia drawled. ‘Like a supermodel before there were supermodels.’
‘She was the Sunsilk girl!’ Devon said. ‘I’ve seen pictures – in that blue swimsuit with all that blonde hair down her back. She was gorgeous. And super-famous!’
‘Weirdly, she wasn’t interested in any of that, ’ Lola said. ‘My mother’s a hippie at heart. All she wanted to do was live in the countryside and have lots of pet goats.’
‘Eww, ’ Devon said, wrinkling her expensively bobbed nose.
‘Exactly what my dad thought. They should never have got married. Dad ended up spending more and more time in the States, and eventually he met Carin and she insisted he stay in New York and divorce Mummy.’ She grimaced. ‘And Carin gets what Carin wants.’
‘We noticed, ’ Madison drawled.
‘Daddy didn’t want to get divorced, ’ Lola explained. ‘And Mummy didn’t want to get divorced either. I could never understand it, because by the end she and Daddy never really saw each other at all. But Carin got her way, and ever since then it’s been miserable.’ She grimaced again. ‘I used to spend so much time with Daddy, but Carin hates me. She just elbowed me out of everything, and Daddy let her. It was horrible.’
‘And where’s your mother?’ India asked.
Lola pulled a face.
‘Living in a gigantic house in Whitstable, of all places, with tons of cats and dogs and goats and God knows what, ’ she said. ‘It’s like a hippie commune, only Mummy’s the only one that lives there, thank God.’
‘Whitstable? Where is that?’ Devon asked.
‘On the coast, ’ Georgia said. ‘It’s hugely trendy now with the alternative fashion types.’
‘Mummy likes it because she says it’s unspoilt, ’ Lola added.
‘Ewww!’ Devon said in a horror reflected in Madison and Georgia’s faces. The word ‘unspoilt’ was on a level with ‘natural look’ or ‘full-fat cream’ in their vocabulary.
Mentioning her father made tears prick at Lola’s eyes. She missed her father so badly. She’d been missing him for years, really, the three years that he had been with Carin. And now he might be gone forever. It was unimaginable.
Her cigarette was burning down. Lola looked around for an ashtray, but it was on her bedside table, hidden behind the huge pile of suitcases. Georgia picked up the one she’d been using, on the mantelpiece, but Lola waved her away, a sudden impulse striking her. Vindictively, she stubbed out her cigarette on the arm of the velvet loveseat, and then threw the butt to the floor.
India gasped.
‘What?’ Lola said, gritting her teeth. She reached for another of Devon’s cigarettes and lit it up.‘It’s Carin’s house now! Why should I care?’
Georgia, giggling madly, emptied her ashtray on the exquisite silk carpet and ground in the ash with her heel.
‘You are such a psycho, Georgia, ’ Devon said with grudging respect.
‘Let’s trash it all!’ Georgia said, giggling even louder.
Lola’s eyes widened. She had been completely shocked by her own action: that kind of wannabe-rock-star room-trashing was totally unlike her. Lola might do drugs and drink too many cocktails, but deep down, she was very well brought up and fastidious. She hated to get her hair tangled or her make-up smeared. If she chipped a nail, she had a meltdown. Her clothes were all dry-cleaned after use, hung up in their plastic bags till it was time to wear them again. Her cashmere sweaters were neatly folded and packed with cedar balls to ward off moths. Her shoes were polished and taken to the cobbler by her cleaning lady as soon as their high heels started to show signs of wear.
She didn’t even like sex that much, because it was too messy.
So the thought of trashing a house, let alone her own house, was contrary to her entire nature.
Or at least, what her nature had been up to now.
‘It isn’t your place any more, Lola, ’ Georgia said, sensing that Lola was wavering.
‘No, it isn’t, ’ Lola said slowly. ‘And it won’t ever be again. I mean, even if – when – everything gets sorted out with my dad’s money, I won’t want to come back here, will I?’
‘No! You’ll buy something bigger and better!’ Madison confirmed. ‘With more than two bathrooms, for God’s sake!’
Lola stood up. Everyone looked at her. She looked at herself, in the mirror over the fireplace. Her big brown eyes were huge and dark, her pretty little jaw set with determination. She looked – well, she looked like the girl who had stood up to Niels van der Veer yesterday, and lived to tell the tale.
‘Right, ’ she said. ‘We’re going to trash the place. Then I’m going to call some cabs and load everything in and take all my cases to Mummy’s, so she can look after them for me. And then I’m going to turn around and go to Heathrow and get on the first plane to New York and find out exactly what’s happening with Daddy!’
‘Wey-hey!’ Georgia crowed, picking up a vase and throwing it to the floor, where it bounced harmlessly off the carpet.
‘I’m going to write things in lipstick on the walls!’ Devon jumped up excitedly.
‘I’m going to cut “I HATE YOU CARIN” into the bathroom mirror with my engagement ring!’ Lola capped that.
‘Jeez, ’ Madison drawled. ‘You girls are wild.’
‘This it, Miss?’ the cab driver asked, slowing down in front of a pair of stone gateposts, rather overgrown with ivy.
Behind them, two more black cabs, dutifully following in file, slowed down as well. Lola’s entourage had drawn stares from every car passing on the motorway and what felt like the entire population of Whitstable: one black London cab down here in the country was unusual enough, but three of them was a once-in-a-lifetime sight. They’d probably be telling their children about it for years to come.
Particularly since the second and third cabs didn’t have passengers, being stuffed to the gills with expensive suitcases.
‘Yes, this is the one, ’ Lola said regretfully.
The cabs turned into the drive, climbing up it with much chugging and changing of gears. Suzanne Myers, the Sunsilk girl, had chosen a rambling stone house on the clifftops of Whitstable, overlooking Tankerton Bay. It was all very pretty and scenic, Lola was sure, but it was also totally typical of her mother not to pick a location that was slightly more normal. And by ‘normal’, Lola meant chic.
Beauty was most definitely in the eye of the beholder. Most observers would have considered Whitstable charming, with its narrow cobbled streets, its little painted shop fronts, its complete absence of the ubiquitous chain stores that had taken over almost every other small town centre, turning them into outdoor shopping malls. Whitstable, by contrast, offered oyster bars, local fishmongers, little galleries selling stained glass and ceramics, old-fashioned tea shops.
It was more than Lola could bear. The knowledge that she couldn’t walk on those cobbles in her Manolos – and if she did snap a heel here, there wasn’t a single shop in town selling something she could bear to put on her feet instead – made her close her eyes as they drove through what she considered no better than a village. How could Mummy, who had been famous for her beauty over at least three continents, bear to be cut off from civilisation like this?
‘Lovely spread, isn’t it?’ said the driver, looking at her in the rear-view mirror.
Lola didn’t even dignify this with an answer. Her mother had an absolute fortune from the divorce settlement with her father – he had been so generous her mother’s lawyer might as well not have bothered to turn up at all – and she’d chosen to spend it on a glorified donkey sanctuary. Really, it would make Lola furious, if she didn’t have more important things to worry about right now. She climbed out of the cab onto the gravel drive.
‘Shall we start unloading the cases, miss?’ called the driver of the second cab.
‘Hold on, ’ Lola said, walking towards the house.‘I want to get the front door open and then you can take them straight in – aaaah!’
The scream had been provoked by the appearance of a very large white bird, waddling round the corner of the house on its big orange feet. Planting them on the drive, it squawked threateningly at Lola.
‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that a swan?’
‘I think it’s a goose, miss, ’ the second driver said.
Suzanne lived in a traditional country style. The front door was practically never used: the main access to the house was the kitchen door, round the back of the property, accessed by a wide stone path.
But right now the goose was standing on the path. And there was no other way round the house.
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