of Hughie’s back. He was laughing, tanned, happy.
Hughie had studied the photograph for so many hours, over so many years, that it formed a memory where none existed. Sometimes he imagined he could still feel his father’s reassuring touch, a firm hand guiding him through the unknown, towards a version of himself he would be proud of.
Hughie slipped the photo back into his empty wallet.
The Unknown: here it was again, looming before him.
He was just back from a three-week stint in Edinburgh performing in an improvised musical about homelessness called Waste! He couldn’t sing much beyond ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but he’d listened to enough Benjamin Britten during his Harrow education to pretend he was obsessed with atonal harmonies. Whenever he hit a sour note, he looked very serious and sang louder. Over time, the rest of the cast came to admire his musical daring. (After the late-night drinking sessions, he’d done a lot more atonal singing than even he’d intended.)
But now he was back in London, living on the sofa in Clara’s front room, and money was officially a problem. Actually, Clara was a problem too.
Clara had taken her mother’s advice: she worked in a large business PR firm in the City. She walked like a man in heels and wore navy-blue suits, hair in a limp, mousy bob – a look that might have been sexy in a Miss Moneypenny kind of way on anyone else but Clara. Her hours and ambition were such that Hughie hardly ever saw her but she left little yellow Post-it notes telling him what to do (or not, as the case might be). Sometimes, Hughie felt sure that she’d come home in the middle of the day to plaster a fresh supply on everything he’d ever touched. ‘This is NOT an ashtray!’ on the eighteenth-century porcelain china planter given to her by her fiancé Malcolm (a china specialist at Sotheby’s who was so obviously gay to everyone else in the world but Clara). ‘Put the seat DOWN!’ on the loo lid, ‘Buy your OWN MILK!’ on the refrigerator and ‘Don’t forget your fucking KEYS again!’ on the back of the door, just as he was about to go out (without his fucking keys). True, he’d only meant to stay a few days but she was being a cow about the whole thing. Nothing had changed between them since he was six and she ten, bossing him around all day like a shorter, fiercer mother, only she was considerably more sober than their mother and therefore more relentlessly eagle-eyed.
Stubbing out his cigarette, he hailed the waitress.
A tiny, auburn-haired girl came over and handed him the bill.
‘You don’t, by any chance, take Amex, do you?’ Hughie smiled. (The Venables-Smythe smile was something to behold – two dazzling rows of even white teeth, punctuated by dimples and a pair of intensely blue eyes.)
‘I, ah …’
‘Look,’ he peered at her name tag, ‘the thing is, Rose, I’m a bit short of change. But I’m a regular – you’ve seen me. I’m here almost every day.’
‘Yes, yes … that’s true,’ she admitted. ‘But this is the third time in a week you’ve been short.’
‘Listen.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll tell you what, why don’t you spot me for one more day and I promise, on my mother’s grave, that tomorrow I’ll come in and make it up to you.’ He smiled wider. She blushed bright scarlet. ‘So do we have a deal?’
‘OK.’
Hughie landed a quick kiss on her cheek. ‘You’re a star, Rose! An absolute star!’ He swung open the door.
‘Wait a minute! What’s your name?’
‘Forgive me! Hughie.’ He offered his hand. ‘Hughie Armstrong Venables-Smythe. Now, don’t give up on me, Rose, will you? I’ll be in first thing in the morning, you have my word.’ And tucking his copy of the Stage under his arm, he left.
Once outside, he picked up a rogue apple rolling just out of sight of the fruit seller on the corner, rubbed it clean on his jeans, took a bite and considered the ad as he strolled home.
Hours irregular. Pay generous. Both sounded just the ticket. But the moral flexibility excited him most. He was uncertain as to the existence of any moral substance in his nature to begin with. How did one know nowadays? What were the criteria? Apart from the most obvious guidelines (would you kill anyone? How do you feel about stealing from old people?), he felt curiously uninformed in this area. It was clear, though, that morally flexible was by far the sexier of the two options.
And Leticia would love him for it.
Leticia Vane jangled the set of keys in her hand and sauntered down Elizabeth Street. She was the kind of girl (and even nearing her mid-thirties, she still thought of herself as a girl) who was aware of how her body looked and the shapes it made when she moved. Even though there was no one about much before noon in this part of the world, she liked to think she was being watched and that people noticed in her a certain dangerous pleasure.
And indeed, Leticia Vane was in many ways her own finest creation. She’d taken what little rough material nature had allotted her and moulded, shaped, hacked away at it as a sculptor chips away at a hunk of marble.
Nothing remained from her previous life as Emily Ann Fink of Hampstead Garden Suburb. The uni-brow that God had seen fit to adorn her with was gone, plucked into two slim, expressive arches; the overbite long replaced; the dull, brown hair dyed a gleaming black that brought out the colour of her eyes. Her face was pleasing but, understanding that she was no beauty, she’d taken a great deal of time over her figure. She ate once a day and smoked the rest of the time. Dying young was far preferable to dying fat. It had taken a lot of hard work to make Leticia Vane, the kind of work not a lot of people appreciated.
And of course there was the back story, too. One of two children of a chartered accountant and a depressed school-teacher wouldn’t do. Leticia wanted something more fascinating. So she transformed her parents into diplomats, serving in faraway countries. She’d been raised in a series of exotic locations; learnt languages (she was far too polite to show them off in public); had affairs at a preternatural age; been doted upon but still suffered from a past too secret and too painful to reveal to anyone.
She’d always longed to be exclusive. Rare. And now she figured she probably had another ten years to really enjoy the fruits of her labours. However, the fragile nature of her accomplishments made them all the more dear.
And so she sauntered, just in case someone was looking out of the window, wondering what that fetching young woman was doing up at this time of day. And with a swagger, she twisted the keys in the lock of the tiny shop.
Bordello was a lingerie shop but it had no shelves, no long lines of silk nothings swinging on rails, no emaciated mannequins with stiff nipples adorned in lace thongs. In fact it looked more like a small, turn-of-the-century Parisian drawing room than a shop. The walls were papered with fine black-and-white stripes, the Louis Quatorze fauteuils were covered in ivory raw silk; a rare, cobalt-blue chandelier sent beams of azure light darting around the room. Leticia offered a bespoke service. There were no samples. There were, however, yards and yards of the most exquisite aged silk and satin in the palest colours: champagne, dove grey, pearl and thumb-nail pink. Bolts of filmy organdies were piled into corners and there were baskets with drifts of lace – antique, handmade, tiny works of art she’d collected from all over the globe. On a round mahogany table
