Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

'What about the windows?' I yelled. 'And what happened to the Drunken Boats?'

'We want our money back!' shouted Graham, thumping the glass-topped table so violently I feared it would crack.

'But Ann-Marie didn't die like…' I started to say, and then my voice trailed away, because the man in the black suit turned towards the camera and, in what appeared to be an improvised move, raised his eyebrows. Just before the screen faded to black, his face cracked open in a smile, though I couldn't for the life of me see what the joke was. It was a smile that was not easily forgotten. Nor was it in the least bit reassuring.

'Not exactly Martin Scorsese, is he, your friend Mr Cheeseboard,' Graham called after me as I went into the kitchen to rinse out our wine glasses.

'He doesn't have Hollywood budgets.' By the time I emerged from the kitchen, Graham had disappeared. I could hear constipated grunting from the bedroom, where I found him strapped into the fitness machine, face turning beetroot as he tugged with all his puny strength on one of the bars.

'You're supposed to push,' I told him.

'Old Cheesewire must be a masochist,' puffed Graham.

'I wish you'd stop calling him silly names,' I said, perching on the edge of the bed. Graham disentangled himself from the machine, strolled over to the wardrobe, and slid one of its doors open.

'What are you doing?'

'Just looking,' said Graham. 'Don't worry, won't touch.'

'You might set off an alarm.'

'Thought you switched that off when we came in.'

'There might be others. Walter Cheeseman's security-mad. He might have man-traps.'

'If he was going to protect anything, it would be all that equipment in the next room,' Graham pointed out reasonably. 'Jeez, look at these suits.'

Despite my misgivings, I got up for a closer look. The rails were hung with several hundred thousand dollars' worth of Giorgio Armani and Hugo Boss. All of a sudden, the wardrobe being fitted with its own burglar alarm didn't seem like such a far-fetched idea after all.

'Old Cheesebob's a conservative dresser, isn't he,' said Graham. 'This is all rather bourgeois, don't you think? Rather straight? Like a bank manager or a politician.'

'More like one of the actors on LA Law ,' I said. It was typical of Graham not to recognize class when he saw it.

'That's what I said. Boring. Hasn't he got any Hawaiian shirts, or camouflage jackets splattered with Vietcong blood? Doesn't he wear a baseball cap? He is American, isn't he?'

He slid the door closed, and, before I could stop him, had the adjoining one open. Plain white shirts, T-shirts and undershorts were crisply folded and stacked in neat piles on the shelving within.

'Talk about poncey,' said Graham, whose own white T-shirts had been boiled down into a uniformly unappetizing greyish-white.

'Hey, what's this?' He slid the door even further open. 'More video tapes,' he said, disappointed.

'That's Walter's job,' I pointed out. 'That's what he makes.'

'But why would he keep them hidden in the wardrobe?'

'Don't ask me,' I said. 'Maybe it's porn.'

Graham made a face. 'You're saying that Beauty and the Breast is family entertainment?'

'Can you see the titles?'

Graham bobbed down to get a closer look. 'Nicholas …' he read. 'Daniel … Robert … Arthur …'

He straightened up and turned to make a face at me. 'And I bet it's not the one with Dudley Moore in it. Well, well.'

'Well what?'

'Our host is gay.'

I couldn't help bristling. I had nothing against homosexuals, but the notion that Walter Cheeseman might be gay struck me as absurd. Would he have lent me keys to his flat if he hadn't been attracted to me? 'That's not possible,' I said.

'Use your head,' said Graham. 'I bet this is gay porn. Maybe our director even shot it himself.'

'He is definitely not gay,' I insisted.

Graham extracted one of the tapes. 'We can soon find out. Let's run this through the VCR.'

'Put it back,' I said, suddenly panicked. 'We can't watch it; it's private.'

'I'm not suggesting you tell him we watched it.'

'It's a matter of trust,' I said. 'Walter didn't lend me keys to his flat so I could poke around in his private possessions. Go on, put it back.'

Reluctantly, Graham did as he was told. 'Now we'll never know,' he said tantalizingly, but the truth was, I preferred not to know. The idea that I'd been entertaining intimate sexual fantasies about someone who wasn't remotely interested made me feel very foolish indeed. Perhaps Walter had been gay all along, and everyone had known except me. What if Charlotte or Grenville or Carolyn or Isabella or — heaven forbid — Sophie had seen me making goo-goo eyes at him? What if they'd been laughing about me behind my back? Poor old Clare. Tries hard, but doesn't have a clue. Remember Social Whirligigs?

The idea that I might have made such a gaffe made me grind my teeth with anxiety.

'There's no need to look like that,' said Graham as he closed the wardrobe door. 'Your friend will never know we've been here. Relax.'

He moved within range, and I pulled him down on to the bed. 'Let's do it,' I said, slipping my arm around his waist. 'Let's do it right here .' I'd had less than half a bottle of wine, but I knew that if I closed my eyes and thought about Robert, everything would be fine.

'Do what?' asked Graham.

'You know,' I said. 'Wouldn't you like a proper king-size bed for once, instead of that grotty old mattress?'

Graham sprang to his feet as though he'd sat on a wasp. 'I'd rather not,' he said primly. 'Not here. Not right now.'

'Upstairs then,' I suggested.

He was looking unaccountably anxious. 'I should be getting back,' he said.

I reminded him about the bag of groceries he'd left in my flat.

'Oh, yes,' Graham said, and mopped his brow. I couldn't understand why he was getting so flustered. It wasn't as though I was sulking about not getting what I wanted, the way a man would have done. On our way out, I patted him affectionately on the backside, just to show there were no hard feelings.

'Clare,' he said. 'I wish you wouldn't.'

'It's all right,' I assured him. 'No one's looking.'

We toiled up the stairs in silence. I wondered if I'd offended him. It was impossible to tell with men; when you asked if they were offended, they always denied it.

We had just reached the landing on the first floor when, without warning, the door to Sophie's flat flew open, and she stood there, framed in the doorway with her Mulberry shopping bag. So much for subterfuge. At best, I thought, she would make a scene and accuse me of consorting with a rapist. At worst, she would snigger and tell everyone I was dating a nerd.

But to my surprise, she did neither of these things. She coolly looked us up and down. I tried to forestall her, assuming this was the calm before the storm.

'Hi,' I said, attempting to push Graham up the stairs ahead of me, but he'd taken root on the landing. 'You've met, um, Graham,' I said, swallowing his name in the forlorn hope she wouldn't immediately place him.

But Graham piped up, 'Hi, Sophie.' I tensed, waiting for Hurricane Sophie to smash us into smithereens.

Sophie took a step forward. 'How dare you,' she said to Graham.

I wanted to curl up and die.

Then I heard her say, 'How dare you come and see Clare without looking in on me.' And she was smiling and saying warmly, 'Hello, how are you?' and air-kissing him and he was atmosphere-snogging her back as though they were best mates who hadn't seen each other since before the dawn of time.

'Don't be a stranger,' Sophie said as she started down the stairs. 'Promise you'll pop round.'