Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

And what kind of bastard set those things before love, before loyalty, before family happiness…?

His sort of bastard, it seemed…

Initially he had tried to excuse himself, to tell himself it was only a one-night stand, or at the very most, the briefest fling, purely sex, that it would revitalise his marriage, make him more aware of the treasure he possessed.

But Abi was more than a fling; he felt increasingly addicted to her. She seemed to be completely amoral: she had lost count, she once told him, of how many men she had slept with; she drank too much; she did a lot of drugs. She was the sort of woman indeed that he despised and disliked, and what he was doing with her, he had no real idea-except that he was having fantastic sex with her. And finding a huge and dangerous excitement in his life.

He had met her only two months before, when he had been (genuinely) at a medical conference. The conference organiser, one of the big pharmaceutical companies, had wanted some photographs taken of the speakers and people at the dinner; the photographer had been an annoying little chap with a nasal whine, but his assistant, following him round with a notebook to record the names of subjects, and a second camera, had been… well, she had been amazing. She was dark, tall, and very skinny, with incredible legs. Her long hair was pulled back in a half-undone ponytail; her black silky dress was extremely short and, although quite high necked, clung to a braless bosom. Jonathan could see it was braless because her nipples stood out so clearly. She wore very high-heeled black boots with silver heels, very large silver earrings, and quite a lot of makeup, particularly on her eyes, which were huge and dark, and her lips, which were full and sensual.

As she bent down to speak to Jonathan to ask his name, her perfume, rich and raw, surrounded him, confusing him.

“Sorry about this,” she said, “but it’s my job. Do you mind telling me how you spell Gilliatt?”

He spelt it for her, smiling. “Don’t apologise. You make a nice change from all the other obstetricians.”

“Good.” She smiled at him, stood up, and walked away.

He sat and stared after her, suddenly unable to think about anything else. She walked… How did she walk? Rhythmically, leaning back just a little, her hips thrust forward; it was a master class (or mistress class? he wondered rather wildly) in visual temptation.

As dessert was served, he saw her working a table in the far corner of the room. He excused himself from the male midwife beside him (now waxing lyrical about womb music) and headed for the gents’; on his way back he spotted her working another table, went over to her.

“Hello again.”

“Hello, Mr. Gilliatt.”

She had a very slow smile; it was extraordinarily seductive.

“I… wondered if you had a business card. I… well, I speak at a lot of these conferences and very often they want pictures, for the local press and so on. It’s… always useful to have a name up one’s sleeve.”

“Yes, of course. That’s great; I’m supposed to hand them out, so you’ve just won me some brownie points from my boss. That’s his number and this is mine-Abi’s my name. Abi Scott.”

“Thank you very much, Abi. Nice to have met you. Maybe we’ll meet again.”

“Maybe,” she said. With another slow smile.

He went back to the table and engaged very cheerfully in a heated debate on induction, fingering Abi’s card and telling himself that he would pass it to his secretary at St. Anne’s the next day.

He stayed the night at the hotel; he had strange, feverish dreams, and woke to an appalling headache. He showered and dressed and scooped up Abi Scott’s card, along with his keys and his wallet, which were lying on the bedside table, stared at it for a moment, then sat down again and, before he could think at all, rang her number…

They had an absurd conversation, both of them knowing exactly what it was actually about, while dissembling furiously.

He’d like a copy of a couple of the pictures for his wife (important to get that in-Why, Gilliatt, why?); could she perhaps e-mail them to him? She could do better than that: they had prints ready-she could drop them off at the hotel; it was only round the corner from her office. That would be extremely kind. Yes, she could be over in half an hour.

She’d been waiting in the foyer when he came down, leaning on the reception desk, fiddling with a long strand of her dark hair; she was wearing the tightest jeans he’d ever seen-they were like denim tights, for God’s sake-with the same silver-heeled boots worn over them, and a black leather jacket. Her perfume hit him with a thud as he neared her, held out his hand.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she said. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Gilliatt.”

Her eyes moved over his face, rested briefly on his mouth. She smiled again, and the invitation in the smile was unmistakable.

“Maybe I could buy you a coffee,” he said, the words apparently leaving his mouth entirely unpremeditated, unplanned. “To thank you for bringing the pictures.”

“That’d be… yeah, that’d be great.”

“So,” he said as they settled at a table, “do you live in Bristol?”

“I do, yes. But I come from Devon. Born in Plymouth.”

“Oh, really? How interesting. I come from Devon, too. I was born in Exeter.” God, he must sound ridiculous to her. Pathetic. “So… what were you doing before you worked for Mr… Mr…”

“Levine. Stripping,” she said briefly.

“Really?” He could hear himself struggling to sound unsurprised, unshocked.

She laughed out loud.

“Not really. Although it wasn’t a hundred miles from that. I was an underwear model. I worked for some cruddy local photographer who specialised in it. Publicity, you know. It meant having representatives from the manufacturers at the sessions. They liked to adjust the bras, that sort of thing. It was gross. What I do now is quite civilised.”

“Yes, I see.”

There was a silence; then he said, “Well, I should be getting along, really. Back to London. Back to the real world.”

“OK,” was all she said.

Right, Gilliatt. It’s still OK. You’re still safe. Go and have a cold shower and get off to London. But-

“I’ll be down here again in a couple of weeks, another conference, in Bath. Staying here, though. Maybe we could have a drink.”

“Yeah,” she said with the slow, watchful smile, “yeah, that’d be great.”

And that had been that really.

That had been two months ago; since then he had thought about her obsessively, all the time. He longed to be with her, and not just for sex. He found her intriguing, almost frightening, so unlike anyone he had ever known. She excited him, she shocked him, and while he did not imagine himself remotely in love with her, he was certainly in her thrall.

She made him run appalling risks; she would stop suddenly as they walked through a dark street, force him into a doorway, pull him into her; she brought cocaine to the hotel rooms where they met, and made a great play of laying out the lines while the room service meals or drink were wheeled in; she called him on his mobile when she knew he was at home, claiming to be a patient, refusing to get off the line until he had made some arrangement to see her.

The terror of it all made his adrenaline run high; the comedown was fearsome. She had become his personal, addictive drug; he needed her more and more.

But the fear had perversely given him courage; he was resolved that this had been the last time-had begun to try to tell her so as they ate breakfast in bed this final morning. It had all been wonderful, he said, really wonderful, but perhaps the time had come to-