It was eleven-thirty.
‘D’you fancy getting in the back?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ teased Ana.
‘Get in the back,’ said Flint, ‘I’ll drive you around for a while. It’s the best way to see London.’
‘OK,’ Ana grinned.
She sat smack in the middle of the black-leather seat and spread herself out a bit, running her hands over the leather pleasurably.
‘Sit back, have a glass of champagne, listen to the music and just watch the world,’ said Flint, ‘just watch and feel …’
She opened the side cabinet and pulled out a half-drunk bottle of champagne. She poured herself a glass and then rubbed her fingertip across the mahogany tabletop. There it was, she thought, examining the white film: the ultimate urban experience. She put her fingertip to her lips and tasted it with her tongue, like she’d seen them do in films about a million times. It tasted bitter, salty. The end of her tongue went numb. She took a sip of half-flat champagne and turned her attention to the world outside. It really was very insulating in here, she thought, with these muted little lights and black upholstery and tinted windows.
They drove along a wide dual carriageway lined with imposing office blocks, past a big gothic church with a modern extension attached, past Woolworths’ head office, Madame Tussaud’s, the Planetarium. And then they turned right past rows of immaculately tended white houses. Lights twinkled in huge, uncurtained windows. Ana saw a cocktail party, a woman in a white dress tipping back her head and laughing uproariously at something anold man wearing a monocle had just said, and then circling her finger around the rim of a wine glass.
They passed the BBC building – she recognized it from pictures – and then turned into a sideroad and zigzagged around for a while. They passed fashion shops and fabric suppliers and canopied restaurants where people sat at pavement tables. She saw a man with black hair kiss the back of the hand of a girl wearing a blue and white dress. She smiled and put a chip in his mouth. He chewed it up and showed it to her on his tongue. She laughed.
A group of girls with highlighted hair strolled down the road, arms linked together, singing ‘Tragedy’ at the tops of their voices and then doubling over with laughter. One of them was wearing a diamond chain around her bare midriff, which sparkled in the orange streetlights. An African man wearing a jellabah and an embroidered cap hailed a cab and climbed in after his purdahed wife. Ahead of her, Ana could see the Post Office Tower.
She looked up, above the shopfronts and the restaurants, at the ornate floors above, the occasional stained-glass window or gothic turret, chipped gargoyle or leaded bow-window. She saw someone moving around in a high-ceilinged flat, talking to someone on the phone, smoking a cigarette. Living their life in the middle of a film set.
A mixed group of drunken youth tripped across Tottenham Court Road, still wearing their office clothes, their cheeks flushed with excitement and cheap All Bar One wine. A girl in a sleeping bag sat in the entrance of Heals, staring vacantly at the passers-by, whose pace picked up as they passed her. Inside a Seventies-style Italian restaurant a group of friends all looked smilingly at theirplump, aproned waiter as he illustrated a story with his arms and his eyebrows.
A doorman outside a hotel hailed a cab for a couple dressed in fluorescent cagoules. She saw them mouthing ‘Thank you very much’ as he held the door open for them. And then she saw the doorman’s face fall as he examined the tip they’d left in the palm of his hand.
The car headed back towards Soho, through squares framed by enormous Georgian mansions. In a railinged square, lit by a single streetlight, a man and a woman argued. Flint took them through the red-light district. The car slowed down to a near-halt as pedestrians swarmed across the narrow roads and cars double-parked outside clubs and taxi offices. It was almost midnight on a Tuesday night, but it looked like every resident of London was out on the streets of Soho. A bulbous-eyed man with tattoos peered into the tinted windows of the car and waggled a large grey tongue at her. Ana flinched before remembering that he couldn’t see her.
She stared into the empty eyes of a dark girl perched cross-legged on a high stool in the entrance of a strip club and wondered how she’d ended up there, and then lost herself briefly in thoughts of destiny and cause and effect and how maybe if that girl wasn’t working in that bar, sitting on that stool at this very moment, maybe someone else on the other side of the planet would be unable to come up with a cure for cancer. Or something …
They flew back down Piccadilly and across Hyde Park, Knightsbridge and Sloane Street. Chanel. Ralph Lauren. Christian Dior. Versace. Names that were just the advertsin between the articles inMarie-Claireto Ana. And there they were, in the flesh – shining, bright, untouchable, like film stars.
As they sailed down towards Sloane Street and down the King’s Road, Ana felt as though she was being lifted out of herself again, like that night in Bee’s flat when she’d dressed up and drunk champagne and listened to Blondie. Nothing else existed – just her thoughts, the music and the moving scenery. But it wasn’t just scenery. It wasn’t just a mishmash of separate, unconnected activities and individuals. It was cohesive. It was life. All those buildings and cars and strangers. They were life. And they were magical.
They turned off the King’s Road and headed for the river. The music changed again. ‘Perfect’ by the Lightning Seeds. And as the river came into view, as she set eyes on Albert Bridge and gasped at its almost saccharine prettiness, at the ruffled reflections of fairy-lights in the treacle-black water of the Thames, she sat back in the soft leather and let a smile play on her lips while the lyrics drifted into her consciousness and seemed suddenly to make sense of absolutely everything.
Ana gulped as the song came to a close. There was a happiness welling up in her chest that brought tears to her eyes. She felt overcome by intense emotion. By intense love. By an intense desire to feel that song, to live that song. Music had always conjured up a sense of another life for Ana, of other,betterways of feeling and existing and being. And now, for the first time in her life, she felt like she could take one of those songs and make it real.
‘Flint,’ she breathed into the Intercom.
‘Your ladyship?’
‘Let’s go,’ she heard herself saying, in a stranger’s voice.
‘Where?’
‘Yours,’ she said, ‘let’s go back to yours.’
33
He smelled her hair first. It was spread all over his pillow. Black and long and in need of a shampoo. He picked up a strand between his finger and rubbed it under his nose. It felt like satin knickers.
He manoeuvred his body slowly on to its side and looked at her. She was fast asleep, her long lashes resting against her cheekbones, her lips slightly parted. He looked down at her bare breast. It was tiny. But it did everything that a breast was supposed to do. It had a neat nipple that was in proportion to the size of the breast and was a nice caramelly colour. The breast itself was round and firm and the nipple tipped ever so slightly upwards, giving it just the right amount of perkiness. He cupped it with his hand and felt her heart beating underneath, a slow, resting beat in rhythm with the little puffs of breath that slipped between her lips.
Well, well, well, he thought to himself, smiling, I’m in bed with Bee’s sister. As Old Domehead had put it so eloquently yesterday – it’s a funny old world.
He took his hand from her breast and very quietly got out of the bed and headed towards the kitchen. It was eight-thirty. The kids next door were already screaming and shouting. A paddling pool had now been added to their artillery of annoying, noise-producing garden contraptions. He made two mugs of tea and padded back tothe bedroom, where Ana was just stirring. He grinned at her while she rubbed her eyes.