by Primula Bond
He was keen to show her all the beautiful parts of Dorset and it was hard to resist him – make that impossible. And anyway, she couldn’t get enough of him. It was as though he’d flicked a switch on in her body and she was in a permanent state of sexual arousal that only he could relieve. He only had to walk in the room and her nipples were hardening against her bra and her pussy was clenching in anticipation and her heart was quickening in expectation.
‘You’re like a bitch on heat,’ Anton said.
‘You’re just jealous.’
‘I am not bloody jealous. I can assure you of that!’
For once there was no humour in his voice and Natalie looked at him carefully. ‘Anton, I’m sorry. That was tactless.’
‘It’s fine. Truly. I’m over Jon. You don’t have to keep tiptoeing around me. I’m past all that nonsense anyway.’
‘Anton, you’re 55 – hardly over the hill.’
He gave an exaggerated sigh and came across to where she waited by the door. Anton always took longer to get ready for work than she did; he wouldn’t leave until he was in a state of perfection – no stray hair, no speck of dust, no nameless marks ever blemished his immaculate suits.
‘I’m worried about you, darling girl,’ he said, and his eyes were serious. ‘This has all been so sudden.’
‘Yes I know, but love affairs are like that, aren’t they?’ she said softly. ‘You don’t see them coming – they do just hurtle at you out of the blue. And wham, bam!’
Anton snorted and she knew that probably hadn’t been very tactful either. He and Jon had only split up in January. ‘Eighteen years I gave that man,’ Anton had told her at the time. ‘The best years of my bloody life – and I’d never even looked at another man. Pity he turned out to have the morals of an alley cat.’
She made a mental note not to mention sex again. Which was hard when it was on her mind constantly. But that didn’t mean she had to flaunt it at Anton.
‘Why don’t you like Will?’ she said. ‘You’ve never given him a chance. You decided he was a bounder and a scoundrel from the moment you saw him.’ She was deliberately keeping it light because it hurt that Anton didn’t like Will. It hurt that her oldest friend, who was usually so wise and supportive, didn’t like the man she’d fallen for.
‘First impressions are usually right.’ Anton hushed her protestations with a wave of his hand. ‘There is something that man is not telling you.’ He frowned at her. ‘I’d put money on it.’
It was not a good start to the day. They had spent the morning in virtual silence, hers sulky and Anton’s defiant, only speaking to each other when necessary, saving their smiles for customers who came into the gallery, but his words had echoed around her head. It was a day she wasn’t seeing Will – he’d said he had commitments that evening though he hadn’t been specific about what they were. So Natalie had plenty of time to think – and she didn’t like her thoughts.
The trouble was, there was a part of her, deep down, that suspected Anton might be right – not about Will being a bounder and a scoundrel – but about him not telling her something. Though they had talked and talked, there were certain areas that were out of bounds. The future was one of them. Every time she’d tried to bring it up – what was going to happen when she went back to London at the end of July? – Will had said something non-committal like, “Let’s just have today, Natalie, the future can look after itself, don’t you think?”
She hadn’t pushed it, so far – they had, after all, only known each other three weeks – she hadn’t wanted to seem needy and pushy, but now the thought had been raised it wouldn’t go away. It scurried round her mind, dark and petulant – what was Will hiding from her? She was pretty sure it wasn’t a wife. He had told her he’d never been married although he had been close to it once. He’d been engaged very briefly to a girl called Kelly, but things hadn’t worked out. He hadn’t expanded on that either. Commitment was another tricky little subject when you hadn’t known someone long. But on the other hand, she did need to know – and they could talk about anything, couldn’t they? Or was this love affair of the century not all it seemed, after all?
* * *
Two days later things came to a head. They had just eaten fillet of plaice with a prawn and white wine sauce which Will had cooked – he was a great cook – and now they were lounging on his sofa, finishing the wine.
‘There’s something I want to ask ...’
There’s something I’d like to play ...’
They both spoke at the same time.
‘You go first,’ Natalie said and in answer Will got up and held out his hand. ‘You’ll have to come into the studio.’
He pulled up a stool to the grand piano and she sprawled on the brown sofa where they’d first made love. His clever, articulate fingers moved over the black and white keys in a warm-up riff and she smiled. She loved to watch him play. He usually played guitar but his first love was the piano – he’d played since he was six, he’d once told her.
It showed. As with all good pianists it didn’t look as though he was pressing down on the keys, but more as if they rose to meet his fingers in some wild dance of their own. As the music flowed into the room Natalie closed her eyes. The piece reminded her of the sea, starting with tiny lapping wavelets and building up to great rollers that swooped in off the Atlantic and crashed onto the shore. It climaxed in a flurry of little ripples that reminded her of her orgasm radiating out into the universe.
Suddenly aware that the music had stopped, she opened her eyes and saw Will staring at her. ‘It’s called The Two-Finger Float,’ he said with a wicked grin. ‘I wrote it for you.’
She sat up and stared at him. She could feel heat in her cheeks and her pussy was dampening. How did he do that?
‘You can’t call a piece of music The Two-Finger Float,’ she said, outraged.
‘I don’t see why not. It’s a very apt name. Don’t you like it?’
‘I love it ... But Will, it’s so beautiful – can’t you think of a – I don’t know, a more ... romantic name?’
‘I could call it Natalie’s Sonata, I guess. You inspired it. But I prefer The Two-Finger Float.’
So did her body – her bloody knickers were soaking.
He got up and came across to sit beside her on the sofa. She shifted along to make room. ‘Was it difficult to write?’
‘No ... Yes … well, parts of it were – the end isn’t quite right. Which is frustrating the hell out of me.’
‘It sounded OK to me.’
‘That’s my point – it’s OK – but it’s not great.’ He frowned. ‘I’ll get it eventually. Sometimes music comes like that – in bits – you know, not fully formed. Not straight away.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Yeah, you do.’ He looked up at the seascape that had pride of place in his studio. And Natalie followed his gaze. He’d bought one of the best ones she’d ever painted. It was a lighthouse, set against a moody sunset just before dusk, and the light was coming through the waves in all sorts of colours: silver; green; turquoise; purple – there were some colours in that mix she had never used before, never seen before, and they gave the painting an unearthly reality that lots of people had commented on.
Will’s fingers danced across the bare skin of her arm and she could smell the spicy warmth of him. The heady familiar concoction that she had come to love.
‘You know how it is when you’re so inspired to create that it just spills out of you and you can’t stop, even though you can hardly see straight any more you’re so tired and your fingers are bleeding over the keys – well, they don’t literally bleed but it feels –’
She reached for his hand and brought his fingertips to her mouth and kissed them. ‘I know how it feels. Only it’s not my fingers, Will, when it happens like that – it’s my heart.’
She looked straight into his eyes and saw tears there and she felt a little clench of love for him. ‘It’s going to be ...’ S
he was going to say, OK, but he halted her with a fierce kiss. She could feel the hunger in him and in the next moment he was on top of her, his weight pressing her back into the fabric of the sofa, his tongue in her mouth, probing, searching.
And then their hands were joining in the urgency, in a mad scrabble at each other’s clothing. There was no time even to take anything off, their need for each other was so great. Moments later he was inside her, thrusting with an almost feverish lust that she had never seen in him before and as he drove her on towards orgasm and over the brink to that place of a million dark stars, she saw tears glittering in his eyes. As he roared out his climax the tears rolled down his cheeks, falling onto her face and she let them dry there, half afraid and half glad because if he could cry with her then maybe Anton was wrong about him keeping something from her, and maybe things would, after all, be OK.
As they fell slowly back into the world, and moved into a position that was more comfortable on the tiny sofa, he kissed her forehead. ‘You are amazing.’
‘We are amazing,’ she echoed. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you.’
He smiled. ‘Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask me, love?’
‘I have to go back to London.’ She sighed. Why was it so difficult to say the words, Will you come with me? Will this end? What will we do when I am there and you are here? She felt like a little girl asking for something she knew she couldn’t have.
‘Will I still see you?’ she said at last. ‘I know you don’t like London, but will you come up? Can we carry on ...’
The expression in his eyes stopped her. ‘You want me to be honest with you,’ he said quietly and she nodded, her heart lodged in her throat. ‘Then I’d have to say I don’t know. I can’t say what will happen next year, next month, or even next week.’
‘But why not?’
‘I just can’t,’ he said quietly, and then he got up and the absence of him paradoxically left a great weighted heaviness in her chest.
Chapter Five
Four days before they were due to go back to London they had a break-in at the gallery. Anton discovered it because Natalie was late going down, having not been back from Will’s flat very long.
She was in the bathroom, putting the finishing touches to her make-up when she heard Anton’s feet on the stairs.
The fact that she heard him at all was odd – he usually moved silently as a cat, so she knew something was wrong, even before he knocked sharply on the bathroom door.
‘Angel – we have a problem.’
‘What sort of problem?’ she asked, mascara brush in hand, as she opened the door and looked with concern at the flush across his sculpted cheekbones.
‘A break-in – although break-in isn’t quite the right word – as there’s no sign of forced entry.’ He was puffing slightly.
‘Then how do you know ...’
‘They’ve taken Waiting for her Lover. Nothing else as far as I can see – not that they’d need to take anything else, the bloody bastards – that painting alone’s worth a fortune.’
‘Taken her,’ she echoed, more troubled by his obvious distress at first than anything else. ‘But how can they have taken her, Anton? She’s huge. No one could just walk in and take her. We’d have heard something, surely ...’
‘We might well have heard something if either of us were actually here.’ Anton pressed his hand to his heart in a dramatic little gesture. ‘But as you were out all night with lover boy and I was ... well ... otherwise engaged, there wasn’t anyone actually around to hear anything, was there?’
‘Oh my God.’ She stared at her half made-up reflection in shock. ‘How did they get in?’
‘I’ve no idea. But they didn’t break in, that’s for sure. I’ve checked all the windows and doors. Nothing’s out of place. Nothing at all. I’ve just called the police.’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘I’ve had to close the gallery. The police will have to look for fingerprints and such like, I imagine.’ He tut-tutted fretfully. ‘This is not good, Natalie, not good at all.’
‘We are insured, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, of course we are insured.’ He picked irritably at a thread on his suit. ‘But that is not the point. How did they get in? I am not happy.’
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ she said, as he turned and paced back out into the hall. When he’d gone she painstakingly finished her make-up, which was hard because her fingers were shaking so much. Not good was an understatement. She knew she’d been wittering on about insurance to cover her grief. She didn’t care about bloody insurance anyway. All she cared about was that someone had her painting. Someone she didn’t know. She imagined the lecherous eyes of some swarthy stranger staring up at her canvas. Grubby fingers touching, stroking, defiling. A wave of nausea rose up in her and she only just made it to the loo in time.
Thank God Anton had gone. Thank God he hadn’t seen how much this had affected her. He would be worrying even more. He might feel responsible because he hadn’t been here last night. Where had he been anyway? Or he would feel responsible because the gallery belonged to his friends and there must be more than two sets of keys – there must be. How else could someone have got in without breaking and entering?
She rinsed out her mouth with mouthwash and sat tightly on the edge of the bath and hugged her arms around herself. She felt violated, dirty and afraid. It was one thing having that painting under her own roof, where she could keep her safe, but not knowing where she was, was torture. Will had been right when he’d said that time that she didn’t sell Waiting for her Lover because she didn’t like the idea of not knowing where her painting would end up, or who would be looking at her. Although she had never told him he was right, she had been startled at his perception.
With a little jolt she remembered that Will had wanted to buy the painting once. She remembered the dark intensity in his eyes when he’d asked if maybe one day she would change her mind about selling.
Will could easily have borrowed her keys and had another set made up; she left them lying around in his flat often enough. Dear Lord, what on earth was she thinking? Will wouldn’t steal her painting. Will loved her. Will had never said he loved her, nagged a little voice in her mind.
Natalie shook her head to clear the dark tumble of thoughts, then went out into the kitchen where she could smell coffee. Anton had just made a cafetière and he glanced up as she appeared.
She thought she had done a pretty good job of covering her feelings but she could tell by his face he was not fooled.
His eyes were troubled as he looked at her. ‘You must not fret.’ He came across and put his hands on her shoulders, gently squeezing. ‘We will find her again. I promise you we will find her.’
‘Do you really think so?’ She bit her lip. His voice was so kind it was bringing tears to her throat and she swallowed hard.
‘Don’t cry, angel.’ Anton let go of her shoulders and she could see he was pretty emotional himself. ‘She is very distinctive, is she not! No dealer would touch her.’
She nodded. That was true, but they also both knew that famous paintings weren’t stolen on a whim and a hope of a sale, they were stolen to order. What if Waiting for her Lover had been stolen for some private collector who didn’t want to put her on display, but coveted her for his own unhealthy reasons? If that was the case they might never get her back.
But neither of them said these things. Anton turned back to the cafetière and busied himself getting out Natalie’s mug and the dark green cup and saucer that he always used.
‘I don’t suppose the police will be rushing to our aid any time soon,’ he grumbled. ‘Sit down, darling girl, let’s see if we can think of any little things that might help them.’
He was right. The police didn’t come until an hour and a half later, by which time Anton had ascertained from his friend, Mick, that as far as he knew there wasn’t another set of keys.
‘Although he said it’s possible the previous
owners may have had other sets,’ Anton told the young WPC who was taking their statement while another officer busied himself downstairs in the shop. ‘Perhaps that is an avenue of enquiry you would like to pursue.’
‘And you and Miss Crane both have your keys in your possession?’ the WPC asked, flicking him a half-amused glance.
‘Yes,’ Anton dangled his keys under her nose. ‘Mine never leave my person.’ He put them back into his pocket and patted it.
‘And mine are usually in my bag,’ Natalie said, getting them out and showing her.
‘Which would also be in your possession,’ the WPC said.
‘Yes.’
‘And you say neither of you were here last night when the robbery took place?’
‘That is correct. Miss Crane was staying with her ... boyfriend.’ Anton stumbled over the word. ‘And I was with friends.’ He looked flushed, Natalie saw curiously. And he didn’t meet her eyes.
‘Presumably, neither of these third parties could have had access to your keys and hence the shop?’
‘No,’ Natalie said, feeling again that tiny whirr of doubt in her heart.
‘Absolutely not,’ Anton said.
The WPC snapped her notebook shut. ‘Leave it with us. As you say, this is a particularly distinctive painting – not the sort of item that can be easily moved on. So we’ll hope to have some news for you very soon.’
When Natalie told Will about the theft, later that day, he was almost as upset as she was. They had met at a jazz club in Bournemouth where some friends of his were doing a gig. Jazz wasn’t Natalie’s favourite type of music, but Will had said they were hot and they really were.
Usually he would have picked her up, but he said he had some things he needed to do in the vicinity so they had come in separate cars. Natalie didn’t mention the burglary until the musicians stopped for a break and it was relatively peaceful and, when she did, Will almost dropped the glass of tonic water he’d just bought her.
