Cents and Sensibility

We had a quick look round, but the pounding beat from the main dance floor was so overwhelmingly loud, even by normal club standards, I was more than a little relieved when a man in a silver boiler suit and a headset approached Jay and asked if we would like to go straight to the VIP area.

He took us up there in a lift and we got out into what looked like the interior of a spaceship, with lines of giant rivets across the metallic walls and ceiling, the area around the dance floor interspersed with little white pods, like futuristic yurts with large porthole windows.

‘This is all a bit weird,’ said Spotter, looking around suspiciously as we settled into a pod. ‘Makes me fancy a pint of bitter in a good old British pub, all this Dr Who nonsense. It’s only an upmarket boozer, isn’t it, this place, really?’

‘Oh, Spotter,’ said Amy, giving him a hard nudge. ‘Just because it’s not The Admiral Cod. This is cutting-edge stuff – Philippe Starck designed this bit of the club. You just concentrate on the pretty ladies and you’ll have a lovely time.’

He already was. All the waitresses were wearing skintight silver catsuits, with large panels cut out in crucial places. Spotter went all pink, as one went sashaying by, a large expanse of bare buttock visible at his face level.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve always had a thing for Barbarella.’

Jay rolled his eyes.

‘Not very subtle, the French, are they?’ he said.

‘Well, they did invent the cancan,’ I said. ‘That should have been a warning to us.’

‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Amy, with customary pragmatism. ‘That will make it all seem a bit more normal.’

She was right. After a couple of champagne cocktails, it seemed practically normal to have a waitress in a bare-bottom catsuit bending over next to me.

We’d been there for a while before it struck us what else was surreal about the place, apart from the decor and the staff uniforms: Jay and Spotter were by far the youngest men there.

It was Jay who pointed it out.

‘Check him,’ he said. ‘The guy in the white jacket and the white shoes, dancing the frug with his great-granddaughter’s best friend. If she shakes her booty much more, he’ll have a cardiac arrest. He looks like the grandpa from The Simpsons.’

Once you’d noticed, it was hilarious. The women were all young and beautiful, the men were all old and shrivelled. With their dark orange tans, they looked as though they’d been pickled.

‘I can’t stand this any more,’ said Jay, after we’d laughed ourselves nearly sick at it all. ‘Let’s go and even things up, huh?’

He took my hand, Amy jumped up and grabbed Spotter’s, and we hit the dance floor at a run.

From the first step I could tell that Jay was one of those men I could really dance with. We hardly broke eye contact as we shook and shimmied and did impersonations of the various ageing fruggers and babes on the dance floor. We were fooling around, but we both knew the real score. Sexual tension was hanging in the air between us so palpably we didn’t need to overdo it.

I turned and danced with Spotter from time to time and we even swapped partners with some of the other couples. I liked dancing with old chaps, because it reminded me of happy times with Ham, and the girls were very happy to take a turn with Jay and Spotter. Happy to the point where Amy and I had to go and entertain ourselves back at the pod, before they could escape back to us.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Spotter, when they eventually returned, redder in the face than ever, flapping his collar and blowing down the front of his shirt. ‘Thought we were going to be eaten alive out there. Men devoured on dance floor. Terrifying.’

But then something really scary happened. The lift where we had come in opened and standing there, fully striking a pose, in a sparkling sequinned minidress, with a full Barbarella hairdo, was Jericho.

Even though we were only there for her launch the next day, it was still a shock to see such a famous face when you weren’t expecting it. Jericho was somehow more of a concept to me than a real person, but there she was, in all her glory.

She really did look amazing and even as I recovered from the surprise, I was registering that she must have researched the venue before she got her look together for the evening, to make maximum impact. What an operator.

She stayed still for a few beats, her white fox-fur coat slipping down her shoulders, surrounded by four enormous men in the immaculate white suits her bodyguards always wore. She made sure everyone had noticed her entrance, and then she headed straight for our pod.

‘Jay, darling!’ she was yelling, before she even got to us.

I turned to Amy in dismay. I knew they were friends, but I hadn’t realized we were going out on a double date. With me as the spare.

‘Here comes Jerry,’ Amy whispered to me. ‘You can get a scoop for the paper.’

‘Jerry,’ he was saying. ‘Great to see you. I’d like you to meet my friends, Stella, Amy, Spotter…’

She couldn’t have been less interested in meeting us. The crocodile on the door-bitch’s dress had given us a more sincere smile, and then, just as suddenly as she had arrived, she had stolen Jay away.

Amy, Spotter and I were left just sitting there, while Jericho engaged him in what appeared, from what I could see through the portholes, to be a very intense conversation in a neighbouring pod, with her bodyguards stationed firmly between us.

So much for my get-lucky charm, I thought. But then, I told myself, Jay clearly was too good to be true, I should have known better. He’d just been toying with me to pass the time until his real date arrived.

I tried not to show how disappointed I was, but I felt really stupid for ever thinking that a smoothie like him could have been seriously interested in me – after all, he’d pretty much told us he was with Jericho when we’d first seen him at the pool bar.

‘So is Jay schtupping Jericho?’ Amy asked Spotter, with customary frankness.

‘I didn’t think so,’ he replied, frowning like a puzzled gun dog. ‘I thought he was just coming on this trip for laughs. I think he would have told me if he’d ridden that pony, don’t you? Not a thoroughbred, but definitely a champion.’

I followed Spotter’s gaze to see Jericho, now minus the fur, shimmying on to the dance floor, leading Jay by the hand.

‘This will be worth seeing,’ said Amy and she was right. It was quite a spectacle, to see the world’s biggest pop diva strutting her stuff, just yards away from us. And she was a great dancer, damn it. Even with her security guards circling round her – like Stonehenge with rhythm, one of them holding her fur – she was a great dancer.

So, I thought miserably, slumping down on the white leather banquette, she was a brilliant dancer, she had the most famous figure in the world – her breasts were reputedly insured for $5 million each – she was wearing next-season Dolce & Gabbana (I recognized it, because I’d just interviewed them in Milan) and she was dancing with the gorgeous man I had foolishly thought might be interested in me. Great.

They stayed on the dance floor for what seemed like six hours, but was probably only about three tracks, when the white suits abruptly walked off, with just a flash of silver sequins visible in front of them.

As I took that in, Jay reappeared and flopped down in the pod next to me. Amy and Spotter had gone off on missions of their own, so it was just the two of us and he was sitting very close to me.

‘Oh, my,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve made a big mistake.’

‘What do you mean?’ I practically squeaked.

‘When she said “come and hang out” down here, I didn’t realize quite how serious she was about the coming part.’

‘She’s cracking on to you?’

‘Fully cracked,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that good?’ I said, because I thought I ought to. ‘Isn’t that what ninety-nine per cent of the world’s heterosexual male population would dream of? And gay for that matter.’

‘No,’ he said, simply. ‘Not me. Of course, she’s got a great body, but so has that waitress over there. It’s not enough.’

And he held my gaze for just that crucial extra beat. I swallowed. I couldn’t help myself and his eyes twinkled in recognition. He’d seen it.

‘Where are the others?’ he said, looking round.

‘Amy’s gone to the loo and Spotter’s over there dancing with the girl who was with Bart Simpson’s granddad. He’s left. Gone back to the rest home.’

Jay laughed.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Let’s go,’ said Jay again, standing up and putting his hand out to me. ‘You and me. Now, before the Venus flytrap in furs comes back. She’s only gone to check out the rest of the club – or to let the club check her out, more like.’

‘But what about the others?’ I asked.

‘Spotter can look after Amy. We’ll leave them a note. Tell them to take the Pimpmobile.’

He fished in his pocket.

‘Here’s the driver’s card; we’ll leave it for them.’

I was about to ask him some really pathetic questions along the lines of: ‘But how will we get back to the hotel if we leave them the limo…?’ when sense took over. I scribbled a note for Amy on my business card and propped it with the driver’s one, against her drink. I knew she’d find it there.

‘OK,’ I said, standing up. ‘Let’s go.’

That was our first challenge. We were heading towards the lift where we’d come in, when a commotion in that area revealed that Jericho was just re-entering by that route. We needed an alternative way out, and fast.

I was looking around for the fire exit, when Jay grabbed the nearest waitress and slipped a banknote into her hand. She looked momentarily surprised, as she glanced down at it, and then took us behind a partition wall to the service lift. We jumped in and down it went.

When the doors opened at the bottom we found ourselves in a dark and smelly back alley.

‘Guess this is the true VIP exit,’ said Jay, taking my hand as we squeezed past some rank industrial garbage bins.

I laughed.

‘I’m not kidding,’ he said. ‘They often leave the real back way, like this, to escape the paps and crowds, but I can’t see Jericho coming out this way. She actually likes to be followed by the paparazzi and mobbed by fans, which is lucky for us.’

After stepping over a pile of unsavoury-looking wet cardboard boxes, we finally emerged on to a scruffy fourlane road, nothing like the elegant avenue of plane trees at the entrance to the club.

‘Hmmmm,’ he said, looking around and rubbing his stomach thoughtfully. I envied his hand. ‘Nothing. Not even a bus stop.’

He looked up and down the road a bit, then back at me. I was shivering in my flimsy dress. It was only mid-March and the night air had a biting chill in it.

‘Are you cold?’ he said, and taking off his jacket, he placed it gently round my shoulders. He pulled it closed across my chest, letting his hands rest on my shoulder blades, and then, as I breathed in the scent of Acqua di Parma, he leaned forwards and kissed me, very gently, on the lips.

‘Pretty girl,’ he said, his eyes roving over my face. ‘Very pretty girl. Let’s get you home.’

He took a coin out of his pocket and flipped it in the air, smacking it down on to the back of his hand and then looked up at me, with one raised eyebrow.

‘Call,’ he said.

‘Heads,’ I answered.

‘Heads it is,’ he said, taking his top hand away. ‘Good. That means this way.’ He started walking along the road, holding firmly on to my hand. ‘And I’m glad about that, because this is the way I wanted to go all along.’

‘So which way would we have gone if I’d called tails, Jay?’ I asked him.

He turned to me and grinned. ‘This way. I’d better watch you. You’re on to me.’

We walked for what seemed like ages, until I could no longer hide how much my shoes were hurting me. Jay stopped and turning his back to me, stooped down a little.

‘Hορ on,’ he said. ‘I just want to get us to those shops along there. I’ll carry you.’

So he did, with both of us, I’m sure, equally aware of my breasts pressing into his back and a similar scenario lower down. My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry by the time we got to what had looked like shops from further back.

But they weren’t shops, they were apartments. Nasty little concrete bunkers of apartments. And outside them was a row of scruffy mopeds, chained to a line of metal posts.

Jay bent down and looked at one of the padlocks, and then he glanced up at me before producing a penknife from one of his jeans pockets. In what seemed like just a couple of little twists, the lock was open.

Then he pulled out a thick wad of banknotes, which I could see were American dollars. I’d never known a guy who carried so much cash. He peeled about ten notes off and after folding them carefully, wedged them under the chain and padlock. As he did it, I saw they were $100 bills.

He rocked the moped off its stand and wheeled it back along the road a few hundred metres, with me hobbling behind. Then he got out the penknife again and with a little more effort than it had taken to break the lock, and a little light swearing, the engine eventually spluttered into life.

He climbed on to the Vespa and put out his hand for me, smiling brightly.

‘Misspent youth,’ he said, smiling broadly. Picked up a few tricks.’

I jumped on the back and we whizzed off, my arms tightly around his waist, back in the direction we had come from.

‘I’m just going to keep going until we get somewhere,’ Jay shouted over his shoulder. ‘And then we can figure out how to get somewhere else from there.’

We could have been on Mars for all I knew. We’d been riding around in that limo for hours – I had absolutely no idea where we were and I didn’t care. I was grinning into the wind that was whipping the hair back from my head and making my eyes water.

Eventually we came to a big junction with a proper signpost. Jay pulled over and we stared up at it.

‘Cagnes-sur-Mer,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘That’s where we need to go. That’ll get us back to Cap Mimosa, I think…’

He turned round and grinned at me. He had a truly beautiful smile, which lit up his whole face. I beamed back, then we set off again and after a few turns, we were on the coast road.

As we hummed along, passing hardly any other vehicles, the sky ahead of us gradually started to lighten. With that, and the sea being on our right, I knew we were going east, but I didn’t get my bearings until we were zipping along the Promenade des Anglais, in Nice, which was eerily quiet at that time of the morning.

It was an exhilarating run, but by the time it was nearly fully light I was so cold I had practically no feeling in my bare legs, so I was relieved when Jay stopped by a small café, where the proprietor was just beginning to roll down his awnings.

‘Let’s have a break,’ he said.

Speaking what sounded like pretty perfect French, he persuaded the man to make us some coffee, although he wasn’t officially open yet, and then he popped over to a nearby bakery and brought back some pains au chocolat still hot from the oven.

We huddled together and ate them like the starving beasts we were – my rushed dinner seemed a lifetime ago – and then Jay gently rubbed my feet and legs until the feeling came back into them. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said suddenly, looking at me in that intense way he had, with his dark blue eyes moving around, like he was trying to put my face together.

‘What do you want to know?’ I asked, suddenly shy.

‘Well, I know you’re covering this trip for the Journal, so what do you write about? Pop stars? Jewellery? Motorcycle thieves?’

I hesitated before replying. Even though I took professional pride in my work, I always felt stupid telling people what I actually wrote about. My nickname on the paper was ‘fluff correspondent’ and it bothered me a lot more than I let on.

‘It sounds really dumb,’ I said, playing with a sachet of sugar on the table. ‘But I write about luxury – about luxury goods, the big brands behind them, the artisans who make the things, the history and traditions, the business side of it, and of course, the shopping.’

Jay looked quite serious. There was a little frown line between his brows.

‘Is that something you’re really into?’ he said quietly. ‘Luxury shopping?’

I laughed.

‘No. That’s why it’s so silly. I mean, I love shoes as much as the next girl, but I only ended up doing this by accident. I always wanted to work in newspapers and I did politics and economics at university because I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, covering wars and revolutions, and things like that. But then while I was a postgraduate trainee, working in features on the Journal, I did an interview with Henri Krug – you know, from the champagne family?’

Jay nodded.

‘Well,’ I continued. ‘The editor of the paper really liked the piece and he offered me a permanent job on the strength of it and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.’

‘Why do you think you have a feel for that kind of subject matter?’ said Jay, still looking serious.

I was slightly beginning to feel like he was interviewing me for a job himself, but as long as I had his attention, I didn’t mind.

‘Well,’ I said, slowly, thinking as I spoke. ‘My father is an architect and he brought me up to think in terms of quality and design and to analyse why some things are somehow just right and others aren’t. I’m certainly not into luxury brands for the status-symbol side of things, I actually don’t really like that element of what I do, but I do love good things which are beautifully made. It’s the integrity I like, not the status.’

Jay was smiling broadly at me again, his whole face was animated.

‘What’s your dad’s name?’ he said, enthusiastically. ‘I’m really interested in architecture, would I know him?’

‘You might,’ I said. ‘Henry Montecourt…’

‘Lord Montecourt?’ said Jay, sitting up suddenly.

‘Er, yeah,’ I said.

Dad had been ennobled a few years earlier for his services to architecture – particularly for his work on low-cost public housing – but it wasn’t something we ever talked about. I was really proud of him, and while he did take it seriously and go to the House of Lords and all that, it embarrassed him to have a fuss made about it.

He was a low-key kind of guy in some ways. He didn’t use the Fain part of his double-barrelled name professionally, for the same reasons I didn’t use the Montecourt bit. As far as the paper was concerned I was just Stella Fain and I’d been embarrassed the day before when Amy had used my full name to introduce me to Jay.

Montecourt-Fain was such a mouthful and made us sound much posher than we really were – like tenth-generation landowners, or something – but while maybe we had been quite grand around 1066, when our ancestor had paddled across the Channel with William the Conqueror, we certainly weren’t any more.

Ham had made all his money himself, he hadn’t inherited a bean of it and any property he owned, as he was fond of saying, was from the toil of his own head and hands, and he was fiercely proud of that. Very much a Labour peer, he wasn’t a big fan of inherited wealth as a concept – to put it mildly – and he’d always told us kids not to expect anything when he popped off.

And I knew he wasn’t kidding; after four divorces and with a tribe of younger children still to support, I knew Ham didn’t have much cash hanging around, even with the extremely high professional fees he commanded. I didn’t mind, though; it was one of the reasons I was so serious about my career.

‘I love his work,’ Jay was saying, really enthusiastically. ‘He did the museum in Boston for…’

Then he stopped suddenly and it wasn’t until much later that I understood that the end of that sentence would have been ‘for my family’s arts foundation’.

At that point, though, I was still blissfully ignorant about the true nature of Jay’s background – and he was loving it.

The sun was out as we set off again and it was a glorious run along the coast. I was almost disappointed when we pulled up on the circular driveway outside the hotel.

The porter ran forwards to park the Vespa for us and Jay turned and smiled at me as he tossed him the keys.

‘Good thing he doesn’t know how I got hold of it, huh?’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, Stella. I know the concierge here pretty well and I will make sure the bike gets taken back to its owner later today.’

I was sure he would, but I had other worries. As we walked into the lobby I caught sight of myself in a mirror. I looked like a voodoo doll. My dress was all crushed, I had mascara smeared down my cheeks, and my hair had been blown into a fright wig. I was just taking in the full horror of it when my rival from the Post newspaper, Laura Birchwood – immaculately coiffed, as usual – walked out of the lift and saw me.

And then, just as she noticed me, Jay turned and called over to me from the reception desk.

‘Stella, honey,’ he said, in a most affectionate tone. ‘What’s your room number?’

‘Hello, Stella,’ said Laura, loudly, making it clear she wasn’t going to save my embarrassment by just nodding and walking on. ‘Looks like you’ve been out on the town. Or was it the gutter?’

Jay came over with the room keys and clearly not registering Laura’s presence, he took my hand and brought it gently to his lips. But Laura had certainly noticed him; she was staring at him like a hungry dog looks at a sausage.

‘Hi,’ she croaked, as Jay finally glanced up and clocked her. I mean, Jay was good-looking and all that, but I couldn’t understand why she was gazing at him as though he was a heavenly vision.

‘Hi,’ he said back, coldly.

‘Oh, er, Laura,’ I said, hating her for standing between me and Jay and the lift. ‘This is Jay. Jay, this is Laura. She’s here for the press trip too,’ I added, not wanting Jay to think she was a friend of mine.

‘Are you Jay Fisher?’ said Laura, still staring at him.

‘Are you Laura Ashley?’ said Jay, in the iciest of tones, and stepped round her, into the lift, almost dragging me with him.

‘The first presentation is in five minutes, Stella,’ Laura practically shouted at me, as the lift doors closed.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked him.

‘I thought she was quite rude, didn’t you?’ he said, with a look on his face I hadn’t seen before. He looked all cross and pinched, with a deep frown line between his brows.

It was an expression I would get to know well, in the future, when I would call it his ‘money-horror face’. It was always brought on by crass people making direct references to his family and his wealth. But back then, still in the innocent flush of our first attraction, I had no idea what was bugging him.

I was about to ask him how on earth Laura knew his name, but something in his expression stopped me and then, as he took my hand again and smiled, I simply forgot about it.

The lift stopped at my floor and Jay put his finger on the hold button and kept it there.

‘I’ll see you to your door, Miss Montecourt,’ he said, then he smiled wickedly and moved closer to me. ‘Unless you would like to come up with me and see what a really good room in this place is like…’

I replied by knocking his hand off the hold button and he pressed the one for the top floor. His ‘room’ covered about half of it. I’d noticed the plaque on the door as he opened it: Presidential Suite.

‘Crikey,’ I said, taking in the wall of glass and the vast deck looking out over the bay. ‘It is a nice room, you weren’t kidding.’

‘Come out here,’ said Jay, leading me to the deck, where there was a large spa tub, gurgling away. ‘Feel like a bubble bath?’

I nodded and he slid the straps of my dress off my shoulders and then, torturously slowly, he nibbled and kissed his way round my neck, and gently behind my ears, his mouth finally meeting mine as his hands reached up and found my breasts through the fine fabric of the dress.

As his tongue slid into my mouth for the first time, I felt as though my entire body had just gone into freefall on some kind of crazy theme-park ride.

Pulling away, I took a deep breath to recover myself, and then stepping back a little, I reached behind and pulled down the zip on my dress, so that it fell suddenly to my feet, and I was standing there in nothing but my yellow silk Myla knickers and my gold shoes.

Jay moaned slightly as his fingers grazed my bare nipples, which were standing to full attention through the combination of his stroking and the gentle sea breeze.

Then he dropped his hands suddenly and just stood looking at me, his eyes sliding slowly down my body. He wasn’t even touching me and I felt like I was going to faint. I had never felt so sexually attracted to anyone in my life – and I wasn’t an inexperienced girl in that area.

I could see Jay was similarly affected. His chest was rising and falling quickly beneath his shirt and I moved back towards him and slowly unbuttoned it, so I could run my fingers over the chest and stomach that had been tantalizing me since the first moment I had seen him.

I pulled his shirt down over his splendid shoulders, and he let it slide off his arms. Then, not taking his eyes from mine, he slowly unbuckled his belt, then pulled down his jeans and kicked them off, so he was standing there gloriously, splendidly naked.

I still wasn’t and as I took his hand and led him over to the hot tub, I didn’t take my knickers off. It was quite deliberate. I wasn’t going to take them off – even though the chlorine in the spa would ruin them – because I wasn’t going all the way with Jay.

I had never wanted to have sex with anybody so much in my life, but it was a decision I had made much earlier in the evening. Round about the time we hit the dance floor at Wonderland. There was no way I was going to sleep with him that first night, because I wanted there to be a lot more nights than that.

Was I being deliberately manipulative? Yes, I most definitely was. Like I say, Ham had taught me everything about men, how their minds work, how to control them and how to keep them interested. And I knew that if I had sex with Jay now, however much he liked me, I would never see him again.

Although I didn’t yet understand how he could get instantly into any night club on the Riviera, why he carried wads of cash in his pockets, or why Laura Birchwood thought she knew who he was and was struck dumb by it, I had figured out that Jay was a serious Alpha Male and Ham had told me exactly how to play them.

Make them wait.

‘He was a Junior Alpha Male,’ Ham had told me, years before, when I’d had my heart broken while I was at university, by a handsome lothario who had loved me and left me in a particularly callous way.

‘What you have to understand, darling,’ he had explained, ‘is that these are men who can have anything they want. They can buy or demand whatever they want, when they want it, so you have to hold something back from them. Make them wait for it, and they’ll be your slaves. Look at me – I still fall for it every time.’

So, calling on all my strength of will, I climbed into the spa with Jay, still wearing my silk knickers, and while we had a wonderful time, kissing and stroking, I never touched him where he most wanted me to, much as I longed to, and I didn’t let him inside my pants either. That he would have to wait for.

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