She couldn’t see Constantine’s minders anywhere, but she knew damned well that they were there, watching. Tony stopped moving.
‘Excuse me, but I think you’ll find I just did,’ said Annie, and got in the car. ‘The Palermo, Tone,’ she said.
But Constantine still had the door open. He hunkered down and looked at her. He still looked as though he was finding this whole thing the biggest joke in the world.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to let this go.’
‘Well, good luck with that,’ she said.
‘You asked me to call you.’
‘Yes I did. Stupid of me. Hey, you’d better get back to your meeting. Redmond Delaney’s a big noise around here, you don’t want to go pissing him off. And if he sees you running after a Carter, that’ll do it every time.’
Constantine stood up. ‘Look, it was a business lunch. We met, discussed things, ate a little, drank a little, now I’m going home.’
‘Home to Holland Park? Or home to New York?’
Constantine pursed his lips and stared at her.
‘Is that what all this is for: you’re sore because I didn’t call sooner?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes you do. And okay, guilty, and you called me on it. But you know what? If I can finally find the guts to face this thing, then so can you.’
‘So you were just having lunch with Redmond Delaney?’ she asked.
‘Is there a law against that, two businessmen having lunch?’
‘Who invited who?’ asked Annie.
‘He invited me,’ said Constantine.
‘I knew it. He wants the contracts on your clubs up West. The Carter firm—my firm—has always held those contracts.’
Constantine nodded. ‘Yeah, well. Maybe he was making a better offer.’
‘Was he?’
‘I didn’t say that. And anyway, a deal’s a deal. I was happy to work with Max, and I am now happy to work with you.’
‘Big of you.’
Constantine paused for a beat. ‘You know, I’d forgotten what a complete pain in the ass you could be.’
‘Well, I’m glad I’ve refreshed your memory,’ said Annie, and pulled the door shut.
Tony put the car in gear and they moved off.
I’m not going to look back, thought Annie. But she did. Constantine was standing there, gazing after the car, shaking his head and grinning. When he saw her looking back, he waved.
Damn, he did look good.
Her heart was beating fast and hard. Her face felt hot. She was having a lot of trouble stopping herself from smiling.
Fuck it, she thought.
Redmond Delaney bought Mira diamonds. She loved diamonds. He bought her furs. She loved those too, but she loved him more.
‘This is just between us,’ he said to her, meaning their love, their lust, whatever the hell it was that drew them together.
Mira nodded her acceptance, but deep down she felt uneasy and hurt. She knew he had parents in Ireland, but there was never any chance that she would meet them. He had a sister too—his twin, Orla. She had met Orla once; they’d been having lunch at a restaurant, and Orla had come in. Reluctantly, Redmond had introduced her to Mira. Orla had looked at Mira like she was contaminated.
So she had become his dirty little secret, one he kept well away from his family. She understood that, even though it pained her. She knew she wasn’t fit for polite society, fit for any society really. Sometimes she even shocked herself. That blackness in her heart sometimes made itself felt in dark moods, wild behaviour. She knew her own weaknesses. She knew that what had been done to her in her childhood had warped her somehow. There were lines that most other people, most normal people, would never cross. But she crossed them every day, with every breath she took, and only occasionally would she think: Jesus, did I really do that?
Not long after their affair began, Redmond bought her a flat in Battersea, close to his family’s breaker’s yard. Not Mayfair—which was what she was used to—but a nice flat in a decent area, a large and sunlit flat which she’d decorated in the latest styles at his considerable expense.
She was happy. William was a distant memory. The brothel she had worked in, the brothel where she met William, had been closed down long ago by the police—so that was all over. But then he already knew that. He made it his business to know things, particularly about Annie Carter and the mob of thugs she controlled.
‘I’m all yours, darling,’ she said, flinging herself into his arms one sunny Sunday afternoon in the sitting room of the new flat.
He’d told her how much he loved her voice, so mellow, so Home Counties. By now Mira knew that he adored the upper classes in general, and they got a kick out of mixing with him, because he was a bad boy and everyone knew it. A bad boy, but a rich boy too—a boy with clout; so the London glitterati flocked around him. From humble beginnings, he had climbed the greasy pole and now he was at the top, with a high-class mistress in tow. She adored him. He adored her. It was love.
‘I was all yours from the minute I first saw you,’ she said against his cheek.
‘Oh?’ Redmond buried his head in her fragrant neck. She wore Shalimar. He loved that too: it was a classic like her, he’d told her.
‘In the dining room at Cliveden.’
‘You noticed me too?’
‘I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. But I had to. Because of William.’
‘He’s the past,’ he said, pulling her in tighter so that she could feel his erection. ‘We’re all that matters now.’
They had christened the new bed in the new flat, and it had been dusk before they were sated, lying together in the warm afterglow.
‘I’m so happy,’ she murmured against his chest.
He was happy too. She was beautiful, polished, exotic—of course he was happy.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ he’d said. ‘I want to know everything.’
