She looked up at this point and saw him, her mouth tightening at once, her jaw set. Her face was opaque with white panstick make-up, her lipstick was the cherriest of reds and she had a beauty spot in the middle of her left cheek. She wore a dress of taupe crêpe de chine and great loops of pearls dangled to her lap.
‘Flavia –’
‘Lorimer, I told you to stay away from me.’
‘No. You have to hear me out.’
‘Look, I’m going to call security, I mean it –’
‘My father died this morning.’
She sat down slowly. The mention of his father’s death had made tears fill his eyes and he could see that for once, perhaps for the first time ever, she believed him.
‘Look, I’m sorry…But that has nothing to do –’
‘You’re the one responsible. If you hadn’t told Gilbert nothing would have advanced this far, this fast. You provoked everything.’
She reached into a beaded bag and brought out her cigarettes, lit one and blew a jet of smoke straight out in front of her.
‘OK, I shouldn’t have, and I regret it, and I’m sorry if it seemed I was using you. Now you must go away.’
‘No. I want to see you again.’
Her jaw dropped in a mock gasp of incredulity. She shook her head as if to dispel a buzzing fly
‘For Christ’s sake, I’m a married woman.’
‘But you’re not happy, I know you’re not.’
‘Don’t you lecture me on the state of my marriage, chum.’
‘Hi. Are you with the Bond Company?’ Lorimer looked up to see a young man with thinning blond hair in a leather jacket and jeans standing there with his hand extended. ‘I’m Fred Gladden,’ he said, ‘Co-producer.’
‘I think he went that way,’ Lorimer said, pointing. ‘I’m with Equity.’ He indicated Flavia. ‘Some mix-up with her union dues.’
‘Oh, right, sorry,’ Fred Gladden apologized, needlessly. ‘They just told me a man in a suit. That way?’
‘Yes,’ Lorimer said. ‘He’s carrying a briefcase.’
Fred Gladden strolled off to look for a suited man with a briefcase.
‘Look at you,’ Flavia said, trying not to smile. ‘Look how you lie. It’s unbelievable, like a reflex, so fluent.’
‘I’m a desperate man,’ Lorimer said. ‘And I think when it comes to duplicity you could teach me a few lessons.’
The brisk young woman in the head set shouted, ‘Scene 44. Dinner party. Rehearsal.’
Flavia rose to her feet and said. ‘That’s me. Look, I can’t see you any more, it’s too difficult. There are things I haven’t told…Goodbye.’
‘What things you haven’t told?’
Lorimer followed her through to the set. Her dress had a low waist which was fringed and the fringe swayed to and fro with the swing of her hips. He felt a surge of desire for her so palpable that saliva squirted into his mouth.
‘Flavia, we must –’
‘Go away, Lorimer.’
‘I’ll call you.’
‘No. It’s finished. It’s too difficult, too dangerous.’
They had reached the set where an elderly, red-faced man was simultaneously talking into a mobile phone and pointing the actors to their allotted seats around the dining table.
‘Flavia Malinverno,’ he said, ‘you’re over there, darling. Just tell the lazy bastard to get his arse down here, he’s got a film to direct.’
Flavia glanced round at Lorimer, still behind her.
‘Charlie,’ she said to the red-faced man, ‘I think this bloke’s stalking me.’
Red-faced Charlie stepped in front of Lorimer and clicked his phone shut. Lorimer’s eyes followed Flavia, watching her take her place at the dinner party.
‘What’s going on, pal?’ The suspicion in Charlie’s voice was menacing, clearly a man used to having his orders obeyed.
‘What? I’m with the Bond Company, looking for Fred Gladden.’
Lorimer was duly told where he might find Fred Gladden and was obliged to move away. He glanced back only to see Flavia in laughing conversation with the actor sitting beside her and felt a satisfying pang of jealousy. He had achieved a little but it was not enough, a paltry thing, compared with what he dreamed of.
He stepped out of the electric warmth and unreal luminescence of the hospital into the dull and pearly gloom of a Chiswick morning, the low-packed clouds filtering the light shadow-free and he sensed his depression settle weightily on him again as if his pockets were filled with stones. He felt an unreasoning anger build in him against Hogg, realizing, with some degree of shock, that in the end it was only the news of his father’s death that had made Flavia talk to him at all. A final service rendered his son by Bogdan