LAM APPEARED FROM NOWHERE, as was his talent, perhaps training, certainly his inclination, and said my car home was on its way. He followed me to the peg where Alden had left my Lacroix jacket stretching—cover myself with that and I could be moderately decent, at least to the superficial glance—and counted off a hundred fifty-pound notes, new and stiff, glowing in that relaxingly distinctive and agreeable rusty-orangey color. Five thousand pounds. He took his time. He wanted to show me that I was nothing but a hired hand like him, just less permanent. I sat down while I watched him, the better to relieve the rubbing of my Jimmy Choo straps against a patch of chafed skin left by the the spreader-bar’s metal anklets. Anklets should be stainless steel, but lined with at least leather, or better still sheepskin. The ball-gag had been simply plastic: at the very least it should have been silicon or leather. I didn’t think Alden would have chosen them. I bet it was Lam.
He waited after he had given me the money. I couldn’t believe this—now he wanted me to bloody sign for it.
I protested, just to wrong-foot him, to puncture his unctuous implied contempt, that I couldn’t possibly take the money, that I did not want it, did not need it. Maybe I was an idiot. But I also told myself that if putting myself on Alden’s staff at this stage of the relationship would collapse it, or if not, at any rate greatly weaken my hand, I might seem replaceable: another nursery teacher Joan would lie on the bachelor bondage bed. The world was no doubt full of them: impressionable and more or less occasionally unsatisfied girls who would put up with anything for a bit of attention. What you pay for up front can always be replaced. I was playing for greater stakes: I wanted him to want to share his life with me. Oh the fantasy! I was a girl from a good family, more than well educated, socially secure, his equal. He would surely recognize the Vanessa beneath my Joan disguise? He needed me. I could make his house into a home. I would cook—we would never have to get take-outs, however high class. I would teach him about wine: what age to drink what. He would teach me about everything else, and how happily I would learn from him. I would encourage him in his music: if he were happy with me it might even get better. With me he would soon be sexually rehabilitated: stem cell research might even lead to re-growth in his spinal cord so that he could walk again. Christopher Reeve had died too soon but science might yet be in time to mend Alden. We would live happily ever after.
I knew as soon as I had these thoughts that they were absurd. These were the fantasies of the seventeen-year-old who believes that a kiss means love and marriage. Whatever was in the Harrod’s chocolates had left me unhinged. The bundle of notes was tempting, even though taking them would tip me over the edge into unqualified, undeniable whoredom.
“You take,” said Lam, annoyed and impatient. He really did not like me. “Taxi get you tomorrow same time. Mr. Alden say: buy clothes, bring receipts. Model shoot here tomorrow. Mr. Alden say your taste better than me: buy top quality; buy color. No cheat Mr. Alden.”
The long speech seemed to have exhausted him. I could hear the taxi outside. I shrugged; I took the money. My jacket had, as I feared, a nasty mark in it where it had been ruthlessly jammed over the designer peg: the beads and sequins made it quite heavy. Before I came back here I’d better sew on a ribbon tag so that at least it could get hung up properly, if I could find a needle and thread.
“Lam,” I said as I went, “if there’s to be any repeat of what happened this evening I want good quality gear in properly lined metal, preferably padded with real sheepskin or calf leather, Japanese silk bonds and definitely no plastic. Mr. Alden deserves better.”
He just looked at me blankly. I don’t think he knew what I was talking about. Perhaps Alden was just phenomenally mean; or perhaps Lam was deaf. Maybe I still wasn’t speaking clearly because of being previously gagged.
It was the same cab, with a discreet, custom-made wheelchair hoist and no public hire license number on the back. The driver was the same sleek, beautiful young African who had delivered me. I asked him what his name was, and he said Loki. My voice really was a little blurry: my lips were swelling. Normally I would have asked how a taxi driver from Somalia happened to have the name of the Norse trickster god, but I was not sure he would make sense of what I was saying, and I didn’t have the energy to enter into any protracted conversation with anyone at the moment.
Loki opened the door for me when we got to my house in Warwick Road, where the water of the canal reflected the moon and stars, and helped me out: looking at my sleepy eyes, my swollen lips, my mussed hair and torn dress, the thongs of my Jimmy Choos wrongly laced, he must have seen I was scarcely fit to be out.
He behaved as impeccably, courteously as if I were a lady of the land, which indeed I just about am, though not by bloodline: my mother’s sister’s husband’s eldest brother is a baronet, and of course there is a connection with the dreadful Lord Wallace F.