that I very often let myself think of the two of them together. It wasn’t a picture I enjoyed.
Would you be very jealous?
The next time we were together I deliberately made her whimper. She had spent a lot of time in the bathroom before coming to bed, and her face looked set and almost hostile. She stared up at me with something I could almost have interpreted as revulsion. So I made it a bit rough, until she uttered that little moan of protest.
Having got her way over the deal to save Crispin’s pride, was she going off me?
I said: “How did you get on with Nina?”
“She’s delightful. A truly strong character. Beautiful.”
It wasn’t a word I would have used myself. Striking, yes. Strong, when it suited her, indeed. But beautiful?
“Well, it’s all settled now, anyway.” I said. “You don’t need to get too involved. From now on you can leave it all to me.”
“Oh, but we’re having dinner together next week. We’ve got so much in common.”
“I’d never have thought so.”
“You could say she regards me as part of the package.”
“Look, are you trying to cut me out?”
“You’ll continue to get your usual percentage.” It came out as a cool, matter-of-fact insult. “Your usual cut.”
I tried to keep things going my way. “Speaking of which….” My fingers strayed over her in the familiar preliminaries. “Time for some more of my perks.”
She flinched. “Don’t you think this is getting a bit of a routine? A bit repetitive?”
It wasn’t good enough. Not after all the trouble I had gone through on her husband’s behalf. She gritted her teeth—I actually heard her do just that—as I mounted her; and when I lay back she said: “So that’s what rape is like.”
“Rape? For Christ’s sake, Gemma, what’s wrong?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I think I’m beginning to understand. You let me shaft you when you wanted me to do something for bloody Crispin. Now it’s fixed, and I’m superfluous. Back to the joys of the marital bed? Back to normal?”
“It was never normal. Nothing like the real thing.”
“The real thing? Like what the two of us have just…?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said again, infuriatingly.
We parted very coolly. Early next evening, despising myself, I couldn’t restrain myself from picking up the phone to ring her. Then at the last minute I put it down again.
Ten minutes later it rang. It was Crispin, inviting me round for a drink.
“We’ve just been talking about you. Gemma thinks we ought to have a little celebration. Tell you what, come round right now. Just for drinks.”
The invitation sounded stiff and oddly uninviting. Maybe Gemma’s suggestion hadn’t appealed to him at such short notice. I tried to argue, but at once he got into forceful mood and sounded downright angry at any idea of my not doing as I was told. He might not really have wanted to offer one of the lower ranks a drink, but now that the offer had been made he expected it to be regarded as an order.
I rang for a taxi. If we were going to knock back toasts to the revivified career of Crispin Brooke, I wasn’t going to risk taking my own car and driving back awash with celebratory booze.
* * * *
When I arrived, my discretion proved justified. Crispin immediately poured a large Scotch and stared at me as if to see whether I was man enough to knock it back. I had seen him in many moods--swaggering he-man, charismatic author at a signing session, and resentful, neglected author—but never in quite this tautly aggressive mood. If this was going to be a celebration, its atmosphere was no jollier than some of our dismal sessions discussing his falling sales.
Gemma swept in and kissed me more effusively than she had ever done before in her husband’s presence or, for that matter, when we were alone together. “Darling David,” she gushed. “The miracle worker!”
She sat down, crossed her exquisite legs, and went on looking roguishly at me—yes, roguishly—while Crispin without a word poured her a vodka and tonic.
There was a silence.
Gemma broke it. “Crispin, do tell David about your idea for your next book.”
My heart sank. It would surely sound drearily the same as the theme of the last two. But for a moment he seemed to relax, and threw out a few vague ideas. Doubts and gloom had been banished. His present novel had been accepted and would come out later in the year, so what was there to worry about?
Yet he remained prickly and resentful about something.
I wondered how much more money Gemma was prepared to invest in their life together.
“A pity,” she said out of the blue, “that you’ve never tackled a straightforward murder mystery. There’s a market for them, isn’t there, David?”
“If you’ve got the knack, yes.”
“Not my scene,” said Crispin dourly. “Too much contrivance.”
Gemma wasn’t looking at either of us but contemplating something far away. “Isn’t that the point? Working out a problem just for the fun of it. Dreaming up twists and turns, and then surprising everybody with a clear-cut logical ending. Aren’t you even tempted?”
“Maybe you ought to try one yourself,” I suggested.
Now at last she glanced at me, with that same sudden gleam as when I had joked about Crispin killing her. “Maybe.” It was an echo of that whisper: Kill me…kill….
And Crispin was glaring. Alert to any threat of competition as a writer? Or as something else?
Standing awkwardly in the middle of his own Persian rug, he emitted a bluff, would-be no-nonsense laugh. As if to show who was in charge here, he leaned down to kiss Gemma just as extravagantly as she had kissed me. Only I was sure his mouth didn’t open. He kept his lips hard, compressed, assaulting. I saw her shiver.
“This last week”—he raised his mouth and spoke to me over her head—“I’ve hardly seen Gemma.”
“Been out buying bottles of bubbly?” I suggested feebly.
Gemma got up and, although the room was not particularly warm, opened a window which, I vaguely recalled, faced out across a passage between this house and the one next door, Then, not leaving the honours to her husband, she reached for the whisky bottle and insisted on refilling my glass. She took her time, leaning over me so that her left breast rested against my cheek.
Crispin glared at me. “You’re not really interested in my next
