though it’s mock applause I drop into a silly curtsy, making the nylon of my uniform crackle. I back away from him across the shiny floor.
‘Hey, Cavalieri!’ Pierre Levi calls as I get to the door. ‘How do you feel now?’
The drugs trolley and the arriving night shift, the phones and the squeaking of rubber-soled shoes all trickle into the quiet bedroom as I open the door.
‘Better, Mr Levi. Much, much better!’
‘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?’
