Pierre

CHAPTER THREE

‘You’re breaking up!’

Francesca’s face freezes on my laptop. She continues speaking even while her mouth remains fixed in an O, as if she’s choking on a walnut.

I take a break from my monologue and she continues her side of the conversation while the moon rises on her side of the Atlantic and she lounges on the deck of their luxurious Hamptons home. Her hot American day of lunches and swimming and trying out kiwi fruit cheesecake, or maybe courgette ribbon pasta recipes for her new cookbook, has become a relaxing evening.

Five hours ahead in London I’m knackered after falling through the door of our cramped boathouse after a full day’s work at the Aura Clinic followed by a long night of moonlighting as a svelte, swaying artiste.

‘Surely you’re allowed to fraternise with patients without getting into trouble? The sun obviously shines out of this Pierre fellow’s ass.’ The Skype image jerks forwards a little. Fran’s mouth is now primly pursed between breaths, and I can see my little nieces waving robotically in the background. ‘It’s not like you’re a qualified medic with ethics and Hippocratic oaths or anything.’

‘The rulebook says, and I quote, that relationships between staff and clients are discouraged and disciplinary action will be taken if there’s an abuse of trust or the duty of care, and when the client is particularly vulnerable. I’m sure that applies everywhere, but because the Aura Clinic is private, and costs a fortune, they police the regulations with a rod of iron.’

‘Except no rods are allowed, apparently!’

I don’t cackle along with her innuendo. ‘I wish I hadn’t mentioned him now. We just get on quite well, that’s all.’

‘More than that. You haven’t stopped talking about him. I haven’t heard you this animated since –’

‘Since Daniele?’

I kick off first one agonising shoe and then the other. The elegant, elongated posture the high heels have afforded me all night crumples back into my more usual casual slouch.

On the screen my sister nods jerkily.

‘Yeah, since that scumbag pissed all over you. So what’s the story with Poirot?’

‘Pierre!’

‘I mean, what happens next? You go on being his nursemaid, wait until he’s discharged and then lose him? Or you live a little, seduce him, break some silly rules?’

‘He doesn’t see me like that. He just wants to talk.’ I rub the circulation back into my toes. ‘He even got me to spill my guts about Daniele and the sous chef.’

‘No wonder he wants to hear some gossip, poor guy’s flat on his back all day. And not in a good way.’ Even from this distance I can tell Fran’s trying to keep a straight face. ‘This all sounds pretty lame, Rosa. You need to ramp it up a bit.’

‘That’s exactly what I did. He was goading me, and I told him everything. He wound me right up like a clock, until I told him exactly how I found Daniele fucking that bitch.’

‘Holy shit! You go, girl!’ Francesca lifts her hand to give me a transatlantic high-five. ‘But you need to go further! Invent your own rules. Tell anyone who catches you that it was discreet, safe and consensual. Where’s your chutzpah? Give the sick guy what he wants, then give him some more!’

‘All he wants is for me to tell him a story every time I see him, like Shazzan or someone?’

‘Scheherazade, you muppet! Christ, he sounds kinkier that I thought. Don’t you know the story of Scheherazade and the thousand and one nights? That the Sultan killed each new lover after he’d slept with her, but Scheherazade kept him awake night after night with her sparkling storytelling and so she was spared in the morning. Basically she talked her way out of trouble.’

‘I haven’t got a thousand and one things to tell him. In fact, I’ve got zero going on in my life at the moment.’

I place my delicate shoes side by side in a box. It felt good wearing them earlier, teetering out of the wings into the spotlight. Then kicking them off in front of all those expectant faces.

‘It doesn’t have to be real, silly! Just talk dirty, if that’s what he wants, embellish, embroider, sex it up till he can’t bear it. Until he has to take you right across his knees in that bloody wheelchair!’

I start to laugh as I wrap the shoes in crackling black tissue paper. My sister’s on a roll now with her long-distance advice.

‘OK, boss! I take your point!’

‘Flirt with him. Bustle about. Bend over a lot. Are you sure he’s not getting a hard-on every time you swish by in your tight little uniform?’

I think of the unmistakable reaction when I washed him that first morning. The soft shape warming up, firming up in my hand like a delicious pastry.

Any man with red blood in his veins would get hard, being handled like that. It was nothing special. I unzip my dress. As soon as the expensive, silky embrace falls away from me I stop being the poised, confident woman I was when I was wearing it.

‘I think he quite likes me, but it’s just a job, Fran. I’m just his carer, a servant really, just like I am to all the other spoiled, rich malades in there.’

‘Don’t be so tough on yourself, cara. You’re coming down after your glittering performance tonight, that’s all. Anyway, if this Levi bloke won’t look at you twice, someone else will. You’re a catch for anyone.’

‘Maybe. It won’t be that long before he’s discharged or I’m sacked or I quit. I won’t see him again and then I can go properly hunting.’ I hang up the dress, aware that if the connection is working my sister can see me in my bra and knickers. ‘Look, Fran, I can’t chatter on. The signal’s hopeless tonight. You might all be chilling out over there, but I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m absolutely done in.’

‘How did the gig go tonight? You look great, by the way. Although satin and silk isn’t normally your style?’

‘I was going to pick up something from the Kate Moss range at Top Shop but my employers insist on high-end cocktail dresses so they sent me to Bond Street. They give me a credit card and a personal shopper. The dress code at the club is very strict for everyone on the premises, staff and members alike. They’re all men.’

‘Who, staff or members?’

‘All the members are men. And most of the staff. They have to wear black tie. Or white tie, if they have military medals, no matter what time of day it is, because the idea is that the minute you walk through those doors you are in another zone. Day and night become meaningless.’

‘Classy! Or pretentious. Sounds like the Starship Enterprise!’ Francesca chortles. ‘All a bit antiquated, though, isn’t it? Black tie? What’s wrong with kilts, or some sharp tailoring? They sound like a bunch of pompous gits. So where is it again?’

I reach into the thin fitted wardrobe for my kimono. If I don’t cover up it won’t just be my sister who sees me semi-naked. If I don’t close the shutters on these portholes anyone motoring down the river or walking along the Embankment at this time of night can see me, too.

‘I’m not supposed to say, but you know what? I don’t give a shit. It’s the London branch of the Club Crème.’

‘Christ, sis! Why didn’t you say? That’s a really prestigious place! Of course I know how secretive the club is! Carlo’s a member!’

‘Really? You happy about that? I’ve heard they get up to some pretty debauched stuff in the entertaining suites.’

‘He’d call it exclusive, rather than secret, but yeah, so long as he doesn’t come home with one of those famous white dildos rammed up his backside. It’s a great place for networking. You know how ambitious Carlo is.’ We both snort with laughter. ‘So, what else? Do they lay on make-up and hair, too? I can’t believe you chose that vampish lipstick all by yourself. Chanel, is it?’

‘Actually, yes, it is, and yes, they do.’ I look away from her to unfasten my necklace. ‘There’s this lovely dressing room for performers, all flowers and scent and deep comfortable chairs, and a very petite Japanese lady who checks you look just so before you go out on stage.’

As I twist the necklace round and fiddle with the clasp I notice that the programme on the TV, which I’ve turned down so we can talk, is panning round a state-of-the-art industrial kitchen, not dissimilar to the one my sister operates from to test recipes for her restaurant in midtown Manhattan.

‘Well, you look great. I bet you knocked their monocles off!’

‘Thanks, Frannie! Hey, there’s a new cooking show just come on. Wonder if the chef’s anyone you know?’

‘Don’t go there, hon. You should know by now that, despite what they do for a living, most chefs are poison.’

I snort. ‘Says the chef who married a chef. And introduced me to one.’

‘So it takes one to know one! And going back to Daniele, it’s been a year now. This born-again virgin vibe doesn’t suit you. It’s obvious how you’re going to get him out of your system for good. Get laid.’ My sister leans towards the screen, her eyes gleaming like a she-devil. ‘Go after Pierre Levi.’

When we were kids people thought we were two peas in a pod. Same dark-brown eyes, same black hair and olive skin inherited from our late Italian mother, usually covered in mud or chocolate, whichever we happened to be eating at the time. At thirty Francesca is five years older than me, but I’m taller than her. We were always more like twins, and like twins we were inseparable. This boathouse doesn’t feel the same without her.

‘I don’t want to make a fool of myself over some guy.’ I sigh when there’s a break in her list of suggestions. ‘Again.’

Slumped alone on this faded tartan banquette with its mismatched scatter cushions while London still sparkles and hustles around me, I feel like Cinderella, deposited by the carriage after my glamorous night out.

Not that Francesca is an ugly sister, though we’ve often called each other that, and worse. Quite the reverse. She’s beautiful, glossy, successful and sweet. But she’s so far away from me now. Not just geographically. She’s removed socially and financially, too. Since she met Carlo at a cooking school in Rome, left our shared flat, married him and moved to New York, they have spent the last ten years opening restaurants, having babies, being feted across the globe.

Finally my big sister draws breath.

‘Don’t let me down, Rosa. By the next time we speak I will expect you to have made progress with this guy, by fair means or foul. I expect you to fight for him. You still there?’ Francesca waits for me to grunt in response. ‘And if this Pierre Levi’s not up for it, how about tickling the fancy of another patient? Or a visitor? Then there’s no moral quandary. Or one of those bow-tie-wearing plonkers in your gentleman’s club. You’re only twenty-five, sis. Too early to shrivel up. Deal?’

‘Oh, bloody hell, if it’ll get you off my case. Deal.’

‘Tell you what. I’ll give you till the end of October. If you’re still lovelorn and celibate then, I’ll send you a free ticket over here. There’s plenty of hunky New Yorkers we can introduce you to.’

‘Thanks, sis, but I don’t need –’

‘Come down off your high horse. You need all the help you can get. I want you to report back that you’ve got that little prick Daniele out of your hair and got someone totally hot, rich and deserving.’

‘Copy that, captain.’

I blow her a kiss, close the laptop, turn to the TV and nearly jump out of my skin.

Because the chef who has stepped up to the televised workstation wielding a rolling pin and kneading dough, fixing those Italian charmer eyes on the viewers under his corkscrew black curls, fixing those eyes on me, grinning like he’s been listening all this time, is none other than my ex-boyfriend. Daniele. And standing next to him, dicing and chopping, is the bitch who stole him away. The woman Pierre Levi called the screamer.

I go to turn up the volume and hear what he’s saying in that velvety accent of his, but decide against it. It will only remind me of what he used to whisper to me when we were in bed together.

Daniele rolls out the pastry and scatters ceramic beans to blind-bake a pie. He shoves it into the oven while the camera focuses on his companion mixing apple, cinnamon and raisin before spreading it on to delicate sheets of filo pastry and brushing it with egg. They exchange some kind of lascivious joke as she rolls it all into a strudel and he taps a sieve over it to sift the icing sugar.

I used to love watching him cook. Only at work. He never cooked at home. He always expected me to do that, which is why we lived on spaghetti carbonara occasionally alternated with schnitzel, my two specialities.

But at work he was the masterful, bad-tempered chef that all TV shows love. And yes, he made you want to get close to him, to tame him. Until we got together I was just one of a group of waitresses at the restaurant who had the hots for him. Those hands, cutting and slicing and gutting and stuffing, you couldn’t help fantasising about them moulding, feeling, slapping and stroking.

And then one night Carlo and Francesca, mini-celebrities by then, swept into the trattoria to check out my new job and it turned out Carlo knew Daniele from catering college. My status elevated me instantly. It’s obvious now that Daniele thought I was a good way to hitch his wagon to Carlo.

Francesca and Carlo have obviously dissected my situation, even if I haven’t.

Well, they can diagnose away. The good news is I no longer miss Daniele. The sadness has gone through the permutations of anger, grief, weary acceptance and, since sharing that story with Pierre, something approaching disdain.

But I miss having a man in my life, in my little wooden double bed. If I’m going to take up Francesca’s challenge, the next man to lie next to me is going to be better than Daniele.

What am I waiting for? I’m in the middle of this vibrant capital city juggling two exhausting but unusual jobs. Apart from when I’m on this boat I’m never alone. My sister’s right. There are men in the clinic, men at the club. I could get them all to want me.

I’m not a nun. I’m a horny young woman with lips made for kissing and a body ripe for someone new. According to our prime patient, a stupendous chest and sexy contours.

Yep. There’s only one man I want.

Someone totally hot, rich and deserving.

* * *

The appointments chart indicates that Pierre Levi’s free. I’m about to knock at his door when Dr Venska comes clacking down the corridor in a spindly pair of strappy white sandals. Not exactly regulation footwear. Nor is her white wrap skirt, which flaps open at the front as she hurries along and I catch a glimpse of a tiny white lace thong slicing up between her thighs.

‘What are you doing hanging around here?’ she asks, coming to a halt and looking down her nose at me. ‘Haven’t you got some commodes to empty?’

‘I need to speak to Mr Levi,’ I mutter, standing my ground as she reaches past me to grasp the door handle. ‘I don’t think he’s expecting you this morning?’

‘Therapy works far better with the element of surprise,’ she replies, opening the door. ‘And I can assure you Mr Levi is always delighted to see me at any time. Day or night. Don’t you worry about that.’

An overpowering waft of perfume hits me as she passes.

‘How about I get your notes for you, then, doctor? I see you haven’t got your file with you.’

‘What’s that?’ She is widening her eyes and pouting in the round mirror of her powder compact. ‘Oh, yes. Sure. If you must.’

She edges through and shuts the door in my face. I find the file in the cabinet, go back to the door and knock. There’s no answer. I knock more loudly. Still no answer. When I try the door handle I realise it’s locked from the inside.

I dither for a moment. What are they doing in there? Why haven’t they heard me knocking? I’m about to give up when my sister’s words nudge me.

Embellish, embroider, sex it up till he can’t bear it …

I’ll take the file round to them through the garden.

The garden of the clinic is large for central London and surprisingly peaceful, despite the rush and roar of the capital city all around us. There are flower beds bursting with roses, formal dark privets and bays clipped into exotic birds and beasts, spreading or weeping trees. A big pond in the middle of the garden is the favourite spot, where a fountain shaped like a dolphin splashes water gently all day. You know which patients are feeling better because this is where they’ll be sitting as soon as they can escape the confines of their rooms.

In this heat I’m tempted to take my clothes off and dive in, or at the very least paddle, but before my break I’ve got to deliver this file.

The French windows to room 202 are open. I’ll give Dr Venska the notes and as soon as she’s finished with him it will be my turn. I don’t know yet what I’ll say. Tell him another story if I have to.

I can’t hear anything. Not Pierre’s gruff murmur. Not the slightly high-pitched, accented voice of Dr Venska. The others nickname her Elsa because she looks and behaves like the cartoon princess. From her white toes with their white nail polish right up to her ice-blonde hair, coiled and pinned tightly to the back of her small, pointed head, it’s like she’s frozen, carved from ice.

I step closer, waving the file to remind them why I’m here.

The bed has been moved, away from the light. I can just about make out Pierre’s legs, one in the white cast, the other now in bandages, a sheet draped loosely over them. He’s wearing different pyjamas today. More jaunty. Different shades of red stripes.

And there’s Dr Venska, pacing the shiny floor between the bed and the window. For a moment I think she’s walking towards me, but her face is turned to the bed. Her white limbs, white face, bottle-blonde hair are all bleached colourless by the sun falling into the room. I can hear her now, talking in a low voice, running her hands down her sides, over her high pert bottom, stretching her long legs as she walks so that her short skirt rides up.

When she approaches the garden door I lift the folder like a shield, but she’s still not looking at me. She spins round towards the bed, lifting her hands in the air and smacking them against her legs, bending down, her tight white blouse straining across her breasts. Her head is jutting forward.

It looks as if they’re having a row. I can’t hear Pierre, or see his response. His right leg, the bandaged one, rises rhythmically as if he’s doing some exercises, but I can’t see his hands, which would indicate his response. His jolly red pyjamas contrast with the whiteness of his bed and the paleness of his companion. Like blood on skin.

More silence. Hectoring him hasn’t worked. Dr Venska is trying a new technique. My God. She’s facing him, slightly sideways to the window, and she’s unbuttoning her blouse, pulling it open.

I step backwards, still clutching the file. So this is the stage they’ve reached in his treatment. Pierre Levi has opened up to her, just like I told him to. Too successfully. Because she’s about to open herself up to him, in every sense of the word.

Whatever she’s about to do, whatever alternative sexual therapy she’s about to administer, whatever rules she’s about to break, I should know better than to hang around to witness it.

I turn too quickly, and stumble over the bench. The file flutters open, revealing the few sheets clipped inside. I tear my eyes away from the sight of Dr Venska’s blouse slipping off her shoulders and look down at the notes. I wonder if they mention the kind of therapy that involves the psychiatrist stripping for her patient?

They don’t. Because there aren’t any notes. Well, hardly any. On the first page, dated during the week Pierre Levi was admitted to the clinic, Dr Venska has written ‘psychosomatic erectile dysfunction?’ But she has apparently failed to answer her own question, let alone cure the suspected condition, because beneath the subsequent dates, up until the date I first met him, is scribbled the conclusion we’ve all become familiar with: ‘unresponsive’.

I glance back into the room. No wonder she didn’t need the notes today. She doesn’t need a folder or a textbook to tell her how Pierre Levi is doing. Her question has already been answered.

I can’t speak for his mental progress, apart from the fact that he told me he’d talked more to me in half an hour than he ever had to her. But what about his physical progress? I scratch at a peeling corner of the file. I mean, there’s nothing dysfunctional about Pierre Levi’s cock. I’ve seen the evidence. My body tightens at the thought of it, rising in greeting that first quiet morning.

What’s the point of gloating over that? Someone else is about to benefit from it. Not me.

There are one or two other illegible notes that refer to the drugs Dr Venska is prescribing, or that the other medics have given him for his pain relief. The word ‘hypnotherapy’ is scrawled in capital letters on some entries. But following that the remaining pages are blank.

It’s no secret that Venska uses hypnosis as one of her special techniques. Quite the opposite. She boasts about it. None of us has ever witnessed the therapy because she insists it has to be conducted in private, one to one. And I can see why, now. She’s been putting her special technique to good use in their private sessions. Sex and hypnosis. What an explosive combination. But for whom? Who benefits? Hypnotist or hypnotised?

How real is the sex in those conditions? And actually, why resort to hypnosis when I made him hard just by holding him?

Dr Venska stands in front of Pierre Levi. Her white blouse drops to the floor. She reaches behind her back to unclip her lacy bra. She slides it away from her breasts and tosses it towards him. His hand lifts and catches it easily, like a cricket ball.

He doesn’t seem remotely surprised.

No wonder she never has any notes to write up afterwards.

I glance around the garden. There are a few patients and staff on the other side of the big beech tree, and there’s the glass corridor that encircles the rest of the garden like a horseshoe and serves both to let light in and to keep an eye on what’s going on outside, but there’s no one on this side of the tree.