© 2004

The insistent mobile phone was tucked down in front of the gear stick. Keeping his eyes on the road, Phil leaned forward, straining slightly against the seat belt as he reached for it. The caller display said 'Pete2', so he knew it was Anya, ringing him to sort it out. He turned the phone off and threw it into the passenger seat, as if carelessly. He'd call her tomorrow. In the evening. He glanced at the dead phone. Let her wait. He shouldn't contact her until she'd had time to cool off and think about him and everything he had to offer.

The sleek car slid effortlessly along the Westway and his heart slowed to the rhythm of the wiper. He licked his upper lip and found it salted. Dried sweat. From the exertion. He smiled softly to himself and glanced in the rear-view mirror, looking back down the dark empty road behind, half expecting to see Anya standing in the middle lane, naked as he had left her, black blood tumbling down her pretty chin, dripping off her finger to the floor. He tried to imagine an expression on her face but couldn't. He didn't know what she would be feeling now. It was their first time together and he wanted it to be all right. He wanted that very much.

He couldn't stop seeing her face as she went down beneath him; her skirt riding up to her thighs as she slid on to the sofa bed, glaring up at him, eyes brilliant with alarm. She was beautiful. Even in submission she was beautiful. She wasn't like Helena, who gradually lost all mystery and beauty for him after their first time. He licked his lip again and smiled, happy at the reminder in the salty tang. He wasn't even afraid of her calling the police, because she didn't have a visa. Russian women weren't like French women. He would give her the bracelet tomorrow, when the swelling had gone down a little.

As he pulled up the steep drive the car dipped on the high tech suspension, jolting his stomach, making him feel sick and proud at the same time as he always did when he pulled up at the white town house. The rooms at the front were dark.

Phil couldn't resist. He leaned over and turned the phone on, typing in the pin number, being careful not to touch any extraneous buttons in case she was phoning him right now and he would be answering. The phone came to life, the pale blue panel lighting up to tell him the time and date. One new message.

He called the answer phone service and selected listen. Anya was sobbing, calling his name: 'Pheeleep, Pheeleep.' She gasped for breath. 'Please to come. My Pheel, please to come.' Spluttering as she spoke, perhaps spluttering blood. He smiled as she hung up and selected listen to messages again. 'Please to Come. My Pheel.' That charged wetness about her mouth was gorgeous. He'd phone her tomorrow, in the evening or afternoon at the earliest.

He took the green velvet jewellery box from his pocket, bundled it into the glove compartment with the dead phone and opened the car door, trying, even alone in the dark, not to grunt as he pulled himself out of the bucket seat. He locked the car carefully, his eyes lingering on the glove compartment, testing it with fresh eyes to see if Helena could have spotted anything through the glass and metal and leather. She'd know the whole story if she found the gaudy present, she'd know about the cheap woman and the why. He couldn't face a showdown. She'd divorce him and take everything. He didn't want her anymore, couldn't take her anywhere. She had too many scars. The best that could happen would be if she just ran back to France and left him alone.

He put his key in the large front door and opened it to a thick, fetid silence. The hall was dark. Following his nightly ritual, Phil put his house keys on the silver calling card plate in the centre of the hall, emptying his pockets of small change and a couple of tenners, giving the impression of openness.

The edge of the large bowl of lilies reflected what was behind him: a brightly lit kitchen door with a shadow moving through it, holding on to the wall to steady herself.

'Well, well, well,' she said, 'if it isn't Jesus H Christ himself.'

She talked in stupid clichés when she was drunk, her French accent coarser and thickening. Phil ignored her and walked across the hall to the bottom of the stairs.

'Where the hell are you going?' He turned. Helena was silhouetted against the light, wearing a long black silk nightgown with lace on the arms and chest. The sort of nightgown an older woman might wear, imagining it to be alluring. Naked and young was alluring, sweet and vulnerable was alluring. Drunk Helena swaying in the doorway, her mouth a bitter button, her eyes blinking slowly, was not.

'I made you dinner,' she said. 'You said you'd be in from work at fucking nine o'clock and I made you a beautiful soufflé.'

Phil stopped on the stairs, holding on to the banister, letting the weight of his body swing him back to face her.

'Supper,' he corrected quietly.

Helena rolled her eyes up in her head, shutting them tightly, and tried to start the argument again.

'I made you fucking dinner-'

'A meal served at that time is commonly called supper. Not dinner.' He swung back to face the stairs, suppressing a smile. 'Supper.'

She was too drunk to think of a comeback. By the time she opened her mouth to start again he was out of sight on the upstairs landing. He heard her draw breath as he felt along the wall. His fingers found the light switch and he flicked it off and left her, flummoxed in the darkness. Silly cow.

He was halfway across the bedroom to their en suite when he heard the first crash from downstairs. She was trashing the kitchen again, smashing up the new set of crockery he had bought her to replace the previous set she had smashed up.

He locked the door to the bathroom, something he hadn't done in weeks. Helena had been up here already, pouring talcum powder on the head of his electric toothbrush, in his aftershave bottles and in his basin. Hers was pristine. The talc was all over the floor, trapped between the biscuit coloured tiles. She'd have to clean it up in the morning or at least arrange for someone else to come in and do it. She never seemed to realize that she was only making work for herself.

Phil went to the cupboard and pulled down a spare head for his toothbrush and a packet of floss. He broke Anya's tooth tonight, knocked part of a premolar right out of her mouth and across the room with a single punch. Anya was beautiful. She had large brown eyes, thick black hair. When he first saw her at the champagne bar it was her legs he noticed. She had a scrawny thinness that made her look like a suspect, a highly strung woman too nervous to eat properly.

Slammo saw him eyeing her up and leaned across the table, dipping his silk tie in a puddle of cheap champagne and cigar ash. 'Is she a drug courier?' he said and Phil laughed.

That was exactly what she looked like. She wore too much make-up, teased her hair in ways it didn't want to go.

The champagne bar was a cheap con serving viscose Cava for twenty quid a glass. The real reason anyone went there was for the striptease and the nearly naked serving women. They were good-looking women though, there was no denying it, but their purpose was to get you to drink more. They got a cut of the tab from their tables. Anya made him buy four bottles, each costing eighty-five quid, before she would sit on his knee. He bought another four for the privilege of kissing her hand.

He had money to spare and he wouldn't be like the other contenders for her affections: he wasn't old or fat. He was a successful broker, not hyper successful and not obsessed with the work. He was never placed on the top table at functions but in her eyes he was a god. He owned a large house outright, he drove a Ferrari, he was generous and handsome and young. Most of the men who went in there were forty or fifty, she said, most of them were fat or sweaty. He was a good catch for her.