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  She went into the bedroom and took off the towel. Anybody looking through the window just then would have seen a naked woman, legs akimbo, looking as if she were about to pleasure herself with a jumbo-size coffee container.

  Of course, the metal tin wasn’t remotely shiny enough and Ruby couldn’t see more than a pinkish blur. She got dressed, still unsure about whether her vulva was quite top drawer.

  As well as the hundred quid she’d spent at the beauty salon, she’d also gone to Selfridges and treated herself to a staggeringly expensive La Perla bra and panties set. The dusky cream lace bra had a deep plunge, which even if she did say so herself, made her breasts look rather magnificent.

  She was in no doubt what she would wear on top. Her floaty, minty green gypsy dress with the short puffed sleeves would be perfect. She’d bought it from Whistles weeks ago and hadn’t worn it, even though she’d been longing to.

  Ruby always felt that one of the things that set her apart from the well-heeled women who shopped at Les Sprogs was their attitude toward clothes. Rich women found the idea of keeping an outfit “for best” completely alien. They bought clothes to wear. They didn’t save them for special occasions. As a result they slobbed around the house in Gucci and went supermarket shopping in cream, dry-clean-only Prada and thought nothing of it. No matter how much money Ruby acquired, she knew she could never do that. She found it impossible to shake off the belief that expensive clothes, which might get stained or spoiled, were for keeping, not wearing. It was a class thing.

  SAM’S FLAT WAS in one of those grand tree-lined avenues off Kensington High Street. He was renting it from an American friend who had bought it, only to have his company send him back to the States for a year.

  He answered the door in jeans, a white T-shirt and bare feet. His hair was still damp from the shower and he smelled deliciously of shampoo and warm, clean skin. As he kissed her hello and told her how utterly stunning she looked, it was as much as she could do to not launch herself at him there and then.

  Instead she remarked on the other glorious smell that was coming from the kitchen. “Puttanesca sauce,” he said.

  She said it was one of her favorites, which it was.

  He led her into an enormous, high-ceilinged and oppressively cream living room. Her feet sank into the thick cream fitted carpet. She stood there taking in the cream feather-backed sofas and floor-length cream curtains with fancy tassels and draped pelmets edged in gold brocade. The walls were two-toned cream: oatmeal French silk wallpaper beneath the wooden dado rail, a lighter off-white above. Ruby looked up. “Wow, the chandelier’s just like the one at the shop.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “I know. Kristian, who owns this place, is heavily into crystal.” He jerked his head toward a display cabinet. It was full of tiny crystal animals. “All Lalique, apparently,” Sam said with a grimace. “But I have added some touches of my own.”

  He pointed to one of the alcoves next to the grand cream marble fireplace.

  It contained a jukebox that looked as if it had come straight from a fifties coffee shop. In the other alcove was the largest plasma-screen TV she had ever seen, and at the far end of the room, in the bay window, was a miniature snooker table. In the center of the table stood a plaster bust of Joseph Stalin, to which Sam had added a baseball cap and a pair of Ray-Ban aviators. “I love it,” Ruby giggled.

  She sat down on the sofa next to a giant, shaggy-haired ginger tomcat.

  “I’m not quite sure how to break this to you,” Ruby said, “but he isn’t cream.”

  Sam laughed. “That’s because he’s a stray. He came in one morning. I made the mistake of feeding him and he hasn’t left. Meet Cat Damon.”

  As if on cue, Cat Damon half opened a lazy eye and closed it again. Ruby began stroking the animal’s head. “Great name,” she said. “I guess this place is sort of Joey and Chandler meet Liberace.” She gave him a sexy look. “Although I think it’s pretty clear you’re not Liberace.”

  “Er, no. That would be Kristian,” Sam said. He was standing by the mahogany dining table pouring champagne. “He’s the one who curls his eyelashes and keeps a note of the first day of the Kenzo sale in his diary.”

  She went over to the jukebox. As she stood admiring the fake walnut and chrome cabinet, he handed her a glass of champagne. “Cheers,” he said. She tipped the glass and felt the bubbles tickle her nose.

  “The guy upstairs was moving and he didn’t have room for it in his new place, so I made him an offer.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, running her fingers down the song list.

  There was a pile of old sixpences on the table. He picked one up. “What would you like to hear?”

  She sipped some more champagne and carried on looking at the song selection. “Hmm…I think it has to be ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’”

  “Good choice.” He dropped a coin into the slot. Then he took her champagne glass from her and placed both glasses on the dining table. As the music started up, he pulled her toward him. She rested her head on his shoulder and they swayed gently in time to the music. As she breathed in his smell again, her head started to spin. At one point she lifted her face to look at him. His face seemed to be waiting for her, smiling, ready to kiss her. First his lips went to her forehead, then to her cheeks. Finally they found her mouth. She parted her lips, felt his tongue probing hers. He tasted of champagne.

  She pushed her hips forward against Sam’s erection. He responded by running his tongue down her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes and let her head roll back. Her legs were about to give way under her. Sensing this he said, “C’mon.” He took her hand and led her first to the kitchen, where he quickly turned out the flame under the puttanesca sauce, and then on into a cream bedroom. It was lit by three giant and exceedingly ornate gold candelabra. Tacky as Kristian’s taste was, she had to admit the effect of the soft, flickering light was intoxicating. She kicked off her shoes and felt the soft deep pile of the carpet under her bare feet.

  Sam’s lips were on her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, the tops of her breasts. By now her heart was racing, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She felt his hand move up inside her skirt and he began stroking the inside of her thigh. Moisture was seeping from her. The next second he had pushed the crotch of her panties to one side and was pushing his fingers deep inside her. She parted her legs, laid her head on his chest and let out a deep, almost feral moan.

  “Come onto the bed,” he whispered.

  The next thing she knew her head was sinking into a pile of soft pillows and he was lifting her dress up over her hips. As he went to pull off her panties, she felt a stab of vagina anxiety-induced panic.

  “Sam?”

  “What is it?”

  “You see, the thing is—I was wondering what with you being a gynecologist and everything…” But he had already removed her panties and her voice trailed off. Her stomach quivered as he began kissing her belly and moved slowly south. Finally he began opening her legs. She made a feeble attempt to close them, but it was useless.

  As his fingers teased her labia, the sensation was so sublime that she let out a tiny whimper. Gently he opened her. She opened her eyes and watched him gazing down at her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He looked up at her. “You were about to ask me something just now. What was it?”

  “Oh, it was nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  His head was between her legs now. A second later she felt his tongue trail over her vulva and begin flicking her clitoris. She heard herself making more soft whimpering noises. As his tongue probed and teased, probed and teased, she felt the familiar unstoppable wave start to build inside her.

  Afterward, he rested his head on her belly and she ran her fingers through his hair. Finally he moved himself up the bed so that he was lying next to her. She put her hand to his crotch. His erection was still straining under his jeans. She traced its outline
with her finger. “I want you,” he said. He sat up and she pulled off his T-shirt. His body was muscular and still tanned from the summer. A thick column of dark hair began at his navel and disappeared under his jeans belt. She undid the buckle and began unzipping his fly. The tip of his penis rose above the waistband of his boxers. She pulled them down, releasing his thick erection. A tiny seed of semen glistened at the tip. She wiped it away with her finger and, kneeling next to him, took him in her mouth. He reached out for her buttocks, ran his fingers between them and found her vulva.

  She could feel he was about to come, when he pulled away.

  “Move onto your knees,” he said, almost commanding her. He reached for the pillows and placed them underneath her.

  She gasped as, without warning, he reached inside her and spread her juices over her vulva. “Your clitoris is so hard,” he said. “Like a little pea.” He carried on teasing it, taking his time to build her toward orgasm. Then just as she was about to come for a second time, he pushed hard and deep inside her so that she cried out. He carried on thrusting, but not for a second did he take his hand away from her clitoris. She was finding it harder to come again so quickly after her last orgasm. He seemed to sense this.

  “It’s OK, there’s no hurry,” he whispered. “We have all the time in the world. Just let yourself float away.”

  She did just that. She closed her eyes and let the sensation she was feeling between her legs fill her entire being until, in a strange almost Zen way that she had never experienced before, she became it.

  “There you go,” she heard him whisper. “There you go.” His fingers were gliding faster and faster on her clitoris. At the same time his thrusts became more rapid and deep. Finally they slowed and she felt one final movement inside her. “Come on, you can do it,” he said. “You can do it.” A few seconds later the tiny contractions started to build inside her.

  They fell back onto the bed in a sweaty breathless heap.

  “Oh, my God,” she said into the pillow, “that was amazing.”

  He ran his hand over her bottom. “Glad to be of cervix,” he said.

  They made love three more times that night.

  The next morning they sat in bed eating Pop-Tarts and drinking coffee with Cat Damon curled up asleep at their feet.

  “You know, you have the cutest morning hair,” he said.

  “Cute?” she said, running her fingers self-consciously through her hair. “Please. Most mornings I look like the progeny of Einstein and Phyllis Diller.”

  “Well, I think it’s pretty,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure if he was just being gallant, but she thanked him anyway.

  “God, I’ve just remembered,” she said. “We never had the spaghetti puttanesca sauce.”

  He said that when he got up in the night to pee, he put it in the freezer. “We’ll have it another time.”

  She said she would look forward to it. “You know,” she said, biting into her second Pop-Tart, “I cannot believe that I am dating a Jewish doctor.” She sat chewing. “Here I am, the perfect Jewish daughter. The irony is that if I told my trendy, liberated Jewish mother, she wouldn’t be impressed.”

  “That suits me fine,” he said, laughing. “Have you any idea what it’s like back home, being treated as a demigod by the members of Irene’s mah-jongg group?”

  She was laughing now. “Oh, come on. Be honest, you love it really.”

  “OK, maybe just a bit. Some of those seventy-something women are really hot.”

  She looked at the bedside clock and let out a long breath. “You know, I really do have to go home and get ready for work.”

  He took her plate and mug of coffee from her and put them down on the floor. Then he pulled her on top of him. “C’mon, just five more minutes.”

  “I’ll be late,” she giggled.

  “No you won’t.” He was sucking her nipple. Just then Sam’s phone rang. “Christ, what now? Ruby, I have to get it in case it’s the hospital.”

  “Sure.”

  He reached out for the phone. In a second his face had darkened exactly as it had when the hospital had called last time. He covered the mouthpiece to tell Ruby he wouldn’t be long. Then he got out of bed and went into the hall to continue the call. She couldn’t hear what was said, but he sounded tense. As he came back into the room she caught him telling whoever was on the end of the line to “hang on in there.”

  “Hospital?” she said.

  “Er…yeah.” He seemed lost in thought.

  “You don’t seem too sure.”

  “Sorry, I was miles away. I need to get to the hospital.”

  “That’s OK. I understand. Look, I have to get a move on anyway.”

  “OK,” he said. Then something seemed to jolt him back into the present and he pushed her back down onto the bed and kissed her very thoroughly, one last time.

  Chapter 13

  Six weeks later, Sam told Ruby he had fallen in love with her. It was a crisp, bright Sunday afternoon in November and they had been for a stroll in Kew Gardens. Afterward they decided to have tea at the Original Maids of Honour, a tea shop across the road.

  “This place looks like something straight out of the 1940s,” Sam said, eyeing the tired decor and dark wood fittings.

  “Doesn’t it?” Ruby agreed. She said that whenever she came here, she expected to see women wearing the “New Look” sipping tea at the next table.

  These days, Ruby saw Sam two or three times a week. On her weekends off—when Annie the student helper filled in for her at the shop—she stayed with him at his flat.

  Saturdays tended to be spent mostly in bed. In between making love, they would catch up with the week’s papers, set the world to rights and eat fish-stick-and-brown-sauce sandwiches while watching execrable made-for-TV films. In the evening they would go out for dinner and then catch a movie.

  On Sundays they forced themselves out of bed around two and usually went for a long walk by the river at Richmond.

  Today they had swapped Richmond for Kew.

  As Ruby poured Earl Grey from a pretty bone china teapot, she explained to Sam that Maids of Honour were tiny custard tarts originally made for Henry VIII. “Apparently he loved them so much that he had the chef who invented them imprisoned so that he couldn’t pass on the recipe.”

  “He imprisoned somebody? Over a cake recipe? Even by ole ’Enry’s standards, that sucks.”

  She giggled at his attempt at a Cockney accent and told him he sounded like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, but she was forced to agree with him about Henry. Imprisoning the poor chap did seem to rather suck. At this point she bit into her own Maid of Honour and custard burst out and oozed over her mouth. Sam reached across and wiped it away with his napkin. “I do love you,” he laughed.

  “Love you, too,” she said.

  Light as the exchange had been, it silenced them. Something more than banter had just passed between them and they both knew it. For a few seconds they sat looking at each other across the table. “When I say I love you,” Sam said gently, reaching out and taking her hand, “I mean I’m in love with you.”

  “I’m in love with you, too,” she said simply. “I think I knew it that first time you kissed me on Brighton pier.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “With me it was when you got so confused that time at Connor’s circumcision.”

  “You’re kidding. But I know I sounded like some wittering bag lady.”

  “You did. But haven’t I ever told you I’ve always had this thing for wittering old bag ladies?”

  She laughed. “You know, when I’m with you, it just feels so natural.”

  “Same here.” His face broke into a smile and he leaned forward to kiss her. “You taste of custard,” he said. He stirred sugar into his tea. “I’ve been thinking. I’m due to go back to the States in a couple of months, right?”

  Ruby hated it whenever he talked about going home. She knew she was about to be forced
into another long-distance relationship, the way she had been with Matt. She was scared of history repeating itself.

  She looked up at him, an almost plaintive look on her face. “Sam, do we have to talk about this now? It’s been such a lovely weekend. We’ve just said we love each other and I don’t want to spoil it.”

  “I’m not going to spoil it. The doctor I swapped places with on the exchange scheme isn’t coming back. Apparently he’s accepted a job in the Middle East. St. Luke’s has offered me his job. It’s only a year’s contract but…”

  “You’ll take it, right?”

  “I already said yes—if that’s OK with you?”

  Her entire face lit up. “OK? How could you possibly think it wouldn’t be OK? Sam, this is brilliant. Totally, utterly and completely brilliant.”

  “I really want to be with you,” he said.

  “And I really want to be with you, too.”

  RUBY WAS AWARE that as well as being lovers she and Sam had become best friends. There was almost nothing she couldn’t tell him. She had never felt so comfortable or relaxed in a relationship. When she’d been with Matt, all they’d ever talked about was their jobs. Work was what bound them together. She wouldn’t say she and Sam never talked shop, but it didn’t dominate the conversation the way it had with Matt.

  The only downside to their relationship was the inevitable phone calls from the hospital. Sometimes they would be in the middle of making love and the phone would ring. “Sorry, gotta go,” he would say, leaping out of bed and pulling on his jeans. “One of my patients is about to push out a baby.”

  Then there were the other calls—the ones that always upset him—like the call he’d got that day in Brighton and later on back at his flat. When one of those calls came, he would always excuse himself and disappear to take it in private. Afterward he seemed distressed and distracted. “Bad news from the hospital?” she would say. He would gaze into the middle distance and mutter something in the affirmative. He never seemed to want to discuss it. Sometimes it would take him hours to recover. She always assumed there had been some catastrophe, like the death of a baby.