A Desirable Residence - By Madeleine Wickham Page 0,41
knew where she recognized him from. In spite of herself, she began to tremble, and a sense of unreal awe percolated through her body. It was him. Rupert from Summer Street. Sitting there in front of her, smirking complacently at her. Oh God, he must think she was so stupid.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ she mumbled.
‘My dear girl!’ He sounded a bit different from the way he spoke on television, she thought confusedly. But it was definitely him. ‘Don’t apologize. And do call me Ian.’
‘You will stay for a drink,’ said the girl sitting in front of the fire. She smiled warmly at Alice, and Alice gazed in silent admiration at her shiny blond hair and tight white T-shirt and big leather belt holding up torn Levis. ‘It’s lovely to meet you. I’ve met your mother, of course.’
‘What do you want?’ interrupted Piers. ‘We’re all on the whisky, I’m afraid. But I could make some coffee.’
‘Have a whisky,’ piped up the stocky man sitting on the floor. ‘It’s good for you.’
‘And sit down here beside me,’ said Ian-Rupert. He smiled winsomely at her, and Alice crossed the floor in a trance. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Any of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The first time Liz and Marcus made love, Liz insisted that the lights stay off all the way through. The second time, she allowed one heavily shaded bedside light to remain on. The third time, Marcus sprang on her unawares in the bath, and there was no time for her to lunge at the light switch. He hauled her, sopping and protesting, out of the geranium-scented bubbles, onto the thickly carpeted hotel bathroom floor, and shut her cries up with a firm pair of lips on her mouth and a firm hand between her legs.
Afterwards, Liz sat happily at the dressing-table, smearing body lotion from a small, complimentary bottle all over herself, and ignoring the thought that although it was free, it was also disappointingly thin, and smelt rather nasty. When Marcus came and put a proprietary hand on her shoulder, she looked at his reflection in the dim, glowing dressing-table mirror, and smiled. She enjoyed his proprietary air, just as she enjoyed his easy, confident driving, his assured voice, his expensive overcoat, and even, perversely, his utter ignorance of and lack of enthusiasm for modern languages.
They had first visited the hotel the week before, ostensibly for dinner. When Liz discovered, during the course of the evening, that Marcus had also thoughtfully booked a room with a four-poster bed, she had been amazed and exhilarated.
‘What if,’ she’d demanded, later on, as they drove back to Silchester, ‘what if I’d just eaten my dinner and said thank you very much, let’s go home now?’
‘Then,’ Marcus replied calmly, ‘I would have paid the bill and taken you home.’ He paused, and put out one hand to caress the nape of her neck. ‘But I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen.’ Liz tingled briefly at the touch of his fingers, then sank back blissfully into the cushy seats of Marcus’s Mercedes. She felt warm, cherished, and protected.
Now she put down the bottle of body lotion, and looked at the picture the two of them made in the mirror. Marcus was broader built than Jonathan, with thick dark hair on his legs and chest, and sturdy arms and wrists. He stood upright, with a relaxed, unconcerned posture, and Liz found herself making a brief disloyal comparison with Jonathan, who would always hunch un-healthily over his books until he suddenly remembered to sit up straight and jerked his shoulders back with an abrupt movement.
‘We’ll have a drink before we go,’ said Marcus, stroking her shoulder. ‘I’ve got to get back by midnight.’ They met eyes briefly, then looked away from each other. A trail of white lotion was still running down Liz’s arm, and she began to rub it briskly into her skin. She had carefully avoided thinking about Marcus’s wife; his family; the clichéd, shadowy characters that threatened at any moment to spoil her treat.
For that was how she thought of Marcus. He was her treat. She deserved him, she reckoned, after all her hard work, after being faithful and cheerful and making such an effort with the tutorial college. She deserved something nice for all of that. And Marcus—as well as being tall and strong and enthusiastic, albeit not particularly imaginative, in bed—had the delicious air of a luxury item. Just sitting in his car, listening to the cocooned sound of