The Cruelty of Morning

Diamond Day

It was in the golden sunshine

of an emerald studded morning

that you looked at me and said

a diamond day is dawning,

my love.

In the waking waterside glare

we were going to share

the beauty of a dove.

To seek the joy of light

the sheer ecstasy of flight

every sweet fantasy in sight.

Colours yellow, blue

and red,

Heart mellow, true

and disconnected from the head.

Your eyes were violet

Your lips were velvet

Your touch was sacred.

You too, my love

were like the dove.

If only I had understood

In even the craziest romantic mood

That dreams are as well as

And maybe as much as

But never ever instead.

And even lovers must get out of bed.

Eleven

It took around four years for Jennifer Stone to complete her weekly newspaper training, virtually exhaust Dorset’s supply of male sex objects, and graduate to an evening paper, the hours of which were interfering with her sex life. She knew she was more than ready for a move to London. Mark suggested she apply for a job on his newspaper, the Daily Recorder. She was invited for an interview and swiftly hired as a reporter. It had been remarkably smooth and painless. Marcus, for so he had become, smiled benignly. Well, she thought, it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with him. He might be the star foreign man already, but he was still only a reporter.

Together they found her a flat. He had half-heartedly suggested she move in with him.

‘Certainly not,’ she had told him curtly. ‘I do not intend to live with any man unless I marry him.’

He had roared with laughter and asked what on earth had possessed the sexiest creature he had ever come across — more laughter — that she should suddenly display such morality.

‘Nothing to do with morality, just practicality,’ she had replied, mildly offended. ‘If I ever move in with someone, I am going to be absolutely sure I am not going to want to move out the next week. I don’t want my home to depend on my sex life, for Christ’s sake, do I?’

He had agreed, with another outburst of mirth, that she most certainly did not.

‘Look, we need to be free spirits, it works for us,’ she’d said.

He did not really need persuading. She was sure he was secretly relieved. But he did try, very occasionally, to do the right thing, did Mark.

‘One thing you must remember,’ he’d instructed. ‘Marcus, not Mark. When you come to London you must learn to call me Marcus.’

She giggled. She could understand why he wanted to change Piddle to Piddell, but Mark to Marcus? She remembered asking him about that and being told it was a much better byline name. Typical of him; he rarely missed a trick.

He told her she should stop being Jenny — that was a name for schoolgirls and waitresses. Jennifer Stone was a good name, a strong name.

‘A good byline name?’ she had queried with a smile.

‘Damn right,’ he had replied. And so it proved to be.

Jennifer too was successful from the start in Fleet Street. She was a general news reporter for four wild years. Away on stories she occasionally strayed, but back home in London there was only Marcus. She moved to a smart flat in the Barbican at about the same time that she was transferred into the features department as a senior writer. And in the four years after Jennifer had arrived in town, Marcus rose to be deputy editor. His promotion had been swift. He was thirty-two years old. The present editor was due for retirement the following year and Marcus was being groomed to take over. He had bought himself a mews house in Chelsea. He drove a Daimler provided by the Recorder — an editor’s car a year or so in advance of the job becoming vacant, a clear statement of management’s intent. When he became editor, there would be a chauffeur as well. He was Fleet Street’s greatest golden boy, and it all seemed so effortless.

Together they were a much sought-after couple. They had youth and glamour, that aura of success about them which is inclined to make people so much more attractive than they would otherwise be. They still did not live together, but they were an established item in the media world.

Their sex life was even more extreme than their working life. Every time they made love it seemed to be a little wilder, a little crazier than the last. She told him all her fantasies. He would get her to tell him again and again how she would like to have two men at once, and sometimes, with his tricks and his sexual wizardry, he would almost make her believe that she had.

Some mornings when she woke she found herself wondering how far they would go together. How far would Mark go for a sexual thrill? How far would she go? Occasionally it bothered her, made her anxious. After yet another extraordinary all-night sex session she would not always experience quite the old glow, quite the old joyful fulfilment. Instead she would feel a bit jaded, uneasy. As she lay pondering the night’s escapades, she would invariably hear Marcus cheerfully whistling as he splashed around in the bathroom. No crisis of conscience there. The thought made her grin. Marcus invariably bounced out of bed without a care in the world, as if he had just enjoyed eight hours of deep, uninterrupted slumber. His powers of recovery never ceased to amaze her. Recovery, what was she thinking about? He never seemed to need to recover. His dressing room was entered through the bathroom. When he emerged he was always immaculate in Armani suits and Gucci shoes. The white blonde curls gleamed with well-being. He smelt slightly, never too much, of Paco Rabanne. He was handsome, successful, and on top of the world. He had the body and the stamina of an athlete, the looks of a Hollywood film star, the brain of an academic, the street wisdom of a barrow boy, and no morals to mention.

Often Jennifer could only groan and pull the sheet over her head.

Marcus was endlessly inventive. There was the time he and Jennifer were invited to a smart media dinner party. In Hampstead. Where else? They were very much on that circuit now, and their opinion about these evenings they sometimes felt obliged to endure was something else they had in common. They both despised them as pretentious pompous occasions. At this one, given by a top TV man, there was the usual careful mix of politicians, journalists and tycoons. The conversation was stilted and contrived and unbearably clever. During the pre-dinner drinks session, Jennifer noticed Marcus in deep conversation with the hostess, really turning on the charm, and she could see the woman responding to his blatant sexuality. She wondered how many women around the table he had had. She never allowed herself any illusions about his ability to be faithful, although, strangely enough, since she had been living in London, sharing his life if not entirely his home, she did not think there had been many other women. And certainly none that mattered. She had also strayed while away on trips — it never seemed important to either of them. She knew that Marcus was obsessed with her and her body. She couldn’t help loving that, and the thought of it turned her on. She decided to think about something else. When the dozen or so guests came to sit down at the long narrow table, she was surprised to find that she and Marcus had been seated opposite each other, unusual at this kind of dinner party for couples to be placed that close together. She felt Marcus staring at her. She glanced at him and saw that he was looking triumphant. She knew the expression well. Could he have been fixing this with the hostess, she wondered, and why on earth would he bother?

A few minutes later she learned the answer. She was wearing a long silk skirt with a slit up the side almost to the top of her legs. She knew Marcus found it sexy. She was chatting with the guest on her left now, and she could hear Marcus talking too, but she knew his eyes were upon her, his gaze boring into her. Then she felt something stroking her leg. Good God, it was his foot. He had his shoe off and the touch was smooth. But then, he always wore silk socks. A second foot found its way inside her skirt and eased her knees apart. This was ridiculous. She felt herself flush. She shot Marcus an imploring glance, but now he wasn’t even looking in her direction. He was deeply in conversation with the politician’s wife on his right who looked as if she would like to take him upstairs immediately. Typical bloody Marcus. He could always do about ten things at once and give nothing away. Nobody in a million years would suspect what he was doing with his feet. The second foot had reached its target now, he was using his toes expertly. On some kind of automatic pilot she felt herself widen her legs. Immediately the second foot joined the first and with much wiggling of toes he eased her flimsy knickers to one side and pushed a big toe inside her, playing with her. Valiantly she tried to compose herself and to carry on listening to the Sunday paper editor sitting next to her pontificate about privacy and the press. Fortunately he barely drew breath, so she didn’t have to speak, and he was so carried away with his own self-importance that he didn’t notice the curious expression on her face. She knew she had gone quite red, and she was having difficulty controlling her breathing.

She was vaguely aware of Marcus making something of a show of dropping his napkin. When he bent down to pick it up he grabbed her right foot, slipped off her shoe, and placed her stockinged foot firmly on his crotch. He was still talking and had completed his task so smoothly she was sure nobody would have noticed a thing. Anyway, who except Marcus would get up to tricks like this in public with his own bloody woman, she thought to herself. Good Lord. Her foot was actually touching his naked cock, she realised with a slight start which she hurriedly tried to disguise as a hiccup. Marginally less embarrassing than revealing that you were involved in a mutual masturbation session at the dinner table. His flies were undone beneath his napkin. How on earth had he managed that? OK you bastard, she thought, now stay cool, Jennifer. She slipped off her other shoe and with her two stockinged feet went to work on him like crazy. By the time dessert had been served she noticed with some satisfaction that his conversation had at last started to falter. His eyes were shining, and he had that tremble in his lip which always happened when he was terribly excited. It will serve the bastard right if I make him come right now, she thought. Then she realised he was speaking to her, and that her own breathing had quickened to short sharp gasps. This was terrible. She was losing control.

‘Darling, I knew we shouldn’t have come,’ she heard him say sympathetically.

She looked at him in horror and realised that only she would be remotely aware of any possible double meaning as he explained to the assembled throng that poor Jennifer had been suffering from an asthma attack that day and it had been a little optimistic to attend this dinner but they had both so wanted to be here. It seemed to be coming on again. He paused and looked at her. She could cheerfully have throttled him. He must take her home, he continued, and so with apologies he was on his feet and around the table and helping her out of her chair. Her knees felt shaky. Asthma indeed! Still, at least it meant nobody expected her to speak. With some concern she looked down at his trousers. His flies were done up. How had he managed that so quickly and without even her noticing? He was a magician. She couldn’t trust herself to attempt to say goodbye.

They left quickly. Marcus walked her down the driveway towards the main road, assuring his hosts that he could pick up a taxi there easily. As soon as the front door was shut he took her by the arm and dragged her into the shrubbery to the side of the house. He flung her against a tree trunk and pushed her skirt up around her waist.

‘You bugger,’ she said.

But she was referring to the sweet torture of the dinner table, not what he was doing now.

‘Yes please,’ he said.

She pulled his face towards her and clamped her mouth on his, forcing his lips apart with her tongue. Eagerly he sucked her tongue inward and their mouths became fused together. His hands tore at her and he crumpled her skirt carelessly with his urgent embrace. That would never be the same again. He clawed at her tights, reducing them to shreds as he ripped them apart. She fumbled urgently with his flies, she wanted to get at him every bit as much as he wanted to get at her. With one strong arm he lifted her slightly off the ground, her back wedged against the tree, and she wrapped her legs around him. He forced her pants to one side and thrust himself straight into her. He knew he wasn’t going to last, he adored this kind of sex. Within a couple of minutes he exploded inside her and he was far too quick for her. He came out of her and she stood there before him with her legs apart, still gasping for it.

‘Do you remember by the dustbins all those years ago?’ she asked, her voice dry with desire. ‘It was like that again, wasn’t it?’

When he could speak he agreed that it was and said to her: ‘Come on, let’s go back to my place, and then I’ll make it happen for you again and again, I promise.’

She could still barely breath. The itch inside her was driving her mad and she told him she couldn’t wait, he had to make her come where they were, he had to. Obediently he dropped to his knees, his fine dinner suit probably ruined for ever in the mulch of leaf mould on the ground, and sucked her into a climax. She shouted in triumph and it lasted a long time. When he raised his head for air he said he hoped nobody inside the house had heard and she told him graphically how little she cared about that.

‘You started it, you sex-crazed beast.’

Laughing together, they adjusted their clothing as best they could, walked out into the road and hailed a taxi.

By the time they reached Marcus’s house he was ready again, and they made love for hours on the big bed. He never seemed to tire of her. In the middle of the night when he was deep inside her he asked her to marry him. She was shocked; she had not expected that. She had never given a thought to marrying Marcus, and they had never before discussed marriage. To her surprise she heard herself say that she would, she cried that she would. When they had finished he reached under the bed and handed her a small package. It contained a beautiful diamond engagement ring.

‘Good God, did you really mean it then?’ she inquired.

‘Would I joke about marriage?’ he replied with another question.

She reached out and touched him casually.

‘Are you sure it’s not just that?’ she asked.

He looked down.

‘I want to marry you in spite of that,’ he grinned.

‘You’re not built for monogamy, Marcus,’ she told him.

‘The only time I have been with another woman since you came to London is when you have been away for weeks on end,’ he said.

She knew it was the truth. He had not lied. She would not have believed him if he had said that there had been no one else at all.

He went on: ‘You’re not away so much now and I believe I can control myself ... if you can.’

He grinned at her. He had no illusions either.

‘Touché,’ she said.

He lightly kissed one of her breasts. The touch of his lips never failed to make her flesh tingle.

‘When I can have you there is nothing and no one else. We have the best sex in the world.’

‘Anything else?’

‘What else is there?’

She wasn’t even sure he was joking.

‘Well, for example, do you love me?’

She looked inquiringly into his eyes. They were sparkling. They almost always were.

‘To distraction,’ he said.

In the morning he was ecstatic. Even more like Marcus than usual. Later in the office, a delivery boy arrived laden down with great boxes of lily of the valley. She had once told him they were her favourite flowers. It was only years afterwards that she discovered that lily of the valley are lethally poisonous.

There was a note asking her to join him for lunch at Langans. She did so joyfully. The next couple of weeks were wonderful. They partied with their friends and they partied without them. They planned their future together. They started house-hunting. They both wanted a big town house somewhere very central; they wanted children, too, but not yet. Marcus had convinced himself that he deeply desired a normal family life, and that he could have that in spite of all the things about him which might seem to conspire against it.

Jennifer and Marcus were the couple the whole of London envied. Years later, Jennifer could never remember whether she had had any suspicions about Marcus at that time. Had she really taken him so much at face value? Had she never suspected that he had an under-life? She wasn’t sure. One occasion did stick in her head, however. Shortly after agreeing to marry him, she had decided to confront him again with some of her lurking doubts. Marcus often took phone calls behind closed doors, sometimes in the dead of night. He was always vague about his movements, going missing without explanation for hours on end, occasionally overnight.

She had blurted out her anxieties to him about his behaviour, the anxieties that had been with her ever since the early days in Pelham Bay, the way she often wondered how he could have made so much money in such a short time, how he seemed able to fix anything and everything so effortlessly, and how she still fretted about Irene and her disappearance and what it continued to mean to both of them.

‘Nothing,’ Marcus had replied shortly. ‘Irene’s disappearance means nothing to either of us any more. If I could ever have done anything about it, I would have done, but I am not going to let it ruin my life — or yours.

‘And as for being successful, have you ever noticed how hard I work?’

It was true. He did work hard, and he was clever, but was there more to it than that?

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But there is something going on in your life that’s a secret and you won’t let me know about and there always has been.’

She paused. Typically he said nothing to fill the pause.

‘I want to know once and for all if it’s another woman,’ she said.

He chuckled then and told her not to be ridiculous, but she persisted in cross-examining him.

‘All I can think of is that you have been having an affair all these years with someone who is unavailable, a married woman, and if it’s not that, what the hell is it?’ she asked.

He sighed. He had to tell her something because he knew she would not let him off the hook now, and he also knew, another born politician’s skill, how to appear to give way while actually giving next to nothing.

‘OK, you silly cow,’ he said affectionately. ‘I’m a Freemason, that’s all.’

‘You’re a what?’ Jennifer was stunned, she felt her head rock back on her shoulders.

‘I’m a Freemason,’ he repeated, with a small smile. ‘You’re supposed to keep things secret, that’s half the idea of it.’

‘Good God,’ she said. This made sense of so much, but it was still curious. From the little she knew of the Masons and the great deal she felt she knew of Marcus, he was the last man in the world she would have expected to join.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me before?’ she asked. ‘Surely you could have told me that?’

‘I thought you’d laugh,’ he said. Clever as ever, he decided to play it lightly now.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘All I know about the Masons is that my father would never join them — because he believed they were a cartel who look after their own at the expense of anything and anybody else inside and outside the law.’

She looked at him questioningly. He seemed more than a tiny bit sheepish. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? Apart from anything else, Marcus liked to give the impression he had carved his life and career singlehandedly with help from no one. Only he would know the degree of assistance he had had from Masons in high places, and, heaven forbid — she thought back to that first job so readily offered her by Marcus’s newspaper — the help she had unknowingly received.

Marcus was not rising to the bait. ‘We all need a bit of a helping hand now and again,’ he said casually. ‘All you are talking about is a group of hard-working men who will support each other through thick and thin. What’s wrong with that?’

She didn’t understand enough about the Masons to know whether that was more or less the sum of it or not. She merely nodded and said: ‘You’ve been a member since Pelham, haven’t you?’

He shrugged his agreement.

‘Fascinating,’ she said, the journalist in her taking over now. ‘How much help have they really given you, then?’

For a moment Marcus frowned and looked as if he might be about to say something in anger. Instead he decided to stick to the light approach.

‘Oh, you’d never guess the half of it,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m so useless at the job I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes as a hack, let alone anything else, without help, would I?’

She raised her hands in defeat. Marcus was a quite brilliant journalist who had always been destined for the top, and that was one of his many attractions to her. So he was a Freemason. That didn’t really bother her much, although she would have preferred to have known all along. Mind you, she could see how he would be embarrassed by it. She asked some more questions. Some he would answer, some he wouldn’t.

Yes, of course he went to regular lodge meetings, and that probably accounted for most of what she described as his mysterious disappearances. Yes, he had to admit that he had joined because he thought it would do his career good and he didn’t see the need to apologise for that. No, he could not and would not tell her how he came to join. Masons had to be invited, they couldn’t just apply; if he told her who had invited him he would be breaking his oath.

Marcus made it all seem quite normal, and Jennifer had no reason to believe that, behind the ritual rigmarole, the Masons were anything other than just that.

She was actually relieved and reassured by what she had learned. She thought it was all a bit silly and probably a bit reprehensible — jobs, perks and God knows what else for the boys — but she knew that one way and another the world was riddled with that kind of thing. The Masons had no monopoly on nepotism, and alongside all kinds of unpleasant explanations for the more mysterious aspects of Marcus’s behaviour which had flicked uninvited through her brain over the years, being a Mason seemed relatively innocent and straightforward. It was also quite amusing. She knew the Masons wore robes and used all kinds of regalia in their ceremonies, and there was a distinctly funny side to the thought of a man as stylish and sophisticated as Marcus indulging in such pursuits.

When she realised she was going to get no more hard information from him, she found herself teasing him about all of that.

‘I’ve always wanted to know if Masons really roll their trouser-legs up,’ she said, stifling a giggle. ‘Go on, share with me the intimate secrets of your apron...’

Marcus went along with it good-humouredly enough. ‘Mind your own business,’ he said, only pretending to be stern.

He was actually relieved that Jennifer seemed so untroubled, and he thought he had handled things rather well. He hoped that would be the end of her niggling mistrust of him — and it seemed to be at the time. She could live happily enough with the knowledge that he was a Mason, and would, in fact, have no further wish to know anything much about it.

She certainly did not intend to let it interfere with the good times. More than anything else, what she remembered from those heady early days in London was the sheer fun of it all, the stimulation, the excitement.

Then came the day a few weeks after they had become engaged, when Marcus asked Jennifer to join him at his flat as soon as she could get away. He had an engagement present for her, a surprise. She duly turned up straight from the office. She was wearing a black Paul Costello suit with very high heels. She looked about ten feet tall. The effect was dramatic. Marcus opened a bottle of good champagne — his favourite Krug, the price of which still rather shocked her — and gave her a glass, finest Waterford crystal, naturally. He kissed her fleetingly on the lips, and his tongue lightly traced a line across her mouth. He too had just arrived from the office. He had taken off his jacket and tie and was wearing only the trousers of his suit. His handmade Jermyn Street shirt was open at the neck. He looked very attractive, and he looked dangerous, but then he frequently did. The fluffy blonde curls and the handsome, eternal boyishness were so deceptive. He reached out and touched her cheek, hardly a touch at all, and yet so suggestive.

‘Undress for me,’ he said huskily.

‘Is that my surprise?’ she asked, with a smile. ‘That’s no surprise.’

‘Later,’ he replied.

His eyes were very bright.

‘Please. I want to look at you.’

Why did she find him so irresistible? Why did she always do what he asked? She undressed in front of him as he had told her to. When she had stripped down to her bra and pants, she turned around with her back to him and gestured to him to undo the catch. He did so, barely touching her with his hands, but she could feel his hardness against her. She stepped forward, letting the bra fall away and her pants drop. Then she turned around and faced him. She was smiling at him, expectant now.

He took her into the bedroom and sat her on the edge of the bed. He knelt before her, opened her legs, and began. She lay back on the covers, spreading her legs wider, loving it, as always. He worked on her until she was crying out for him to be inside her. He stood up and undressed before her, naked, strong, beautiful. He came forward as if he was going to enter her, and then he eased himself up her body until he was sitting astride her face. He was going to tease her tonight. She didn’t mind. It would be all the better finally. She started to suck him and she felt his hand stretched behind him playing with her. She was aching for it. His fingers were so clever. Then she became aware of something very strange.

She realised two things at once. One was that Marcus was now holding both her wrists above her head with his hands, forcing her arms back on the pillows. And the other was that there was something at work again on the most intimate part of her. It was a tongue, a hungry seeking tongue. Somebody else was in the room with them, and that somebody was sucking her. She couldn’t see who it was. She didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman. She started to struggle. Marcus was thrusting deep into her mouth. Relentless. She could not speak. She looked up into his eyes and saw the wicked enjoyment there. Marcus was telling her that this was her surprise, this was her fantasy. Two men. So it was a man, she thought obscurely, thank God at least for that. Marcus was still talking. He wanted her to live it out, to explore every remotest part of her sexuality, every extreme. He wanted to watch her do it. He wanted her to have it all the ways she had ever dreamed of. She was still struggling. Two strong arms had pinned her legs down, forcing them apart. The tongue was busy, darting in and out of her. She felt herself begin to weaken. Whoever it was was good, very good, and she was so ready there. It felt so sweet and so exciting, she couldn’t struggle any more. God, what was happening to her? She didn’t want to do this but she couldn’t stop herself. Marcus had been clever.

She was starting to move with it now. The other man sensed the change in her immediately. He let go of her legs and she wrapped them around his head. He began to use his hands on her as well. She was going wild for it now, and when she looked up at Marcus she saw the triumph in his eyes. The bastard. When the sucking abruptly stopped, she knew what was going to happen next. The strong hands held her legs apart again and the stranger entered her, very powerfully, straight in. She was open and ready, but she felt herself stretching. This guy was gigantic. Marcus was big, this guy was a freak. She was completely filled up. It hurt a little at first, but he was good, moving only slightly inside her, gently to begin with, gradually building up the strokes until it felt as if he was hammering her right down into the feathered depths of the bed. This was pure sex. She had not even seen his face. This was the sexiest thing that had ever happened to her. She was living out all her wildest fantasies. She was crazy with excitement. She was going to explode. She came like fury, a wild, angry, gut orgasm, and as she did so Marcus could contain himself no longer. He shot into her mouth and he told her to swallow it as he pumped himself dry. Meekly she did so.

He rolled off her and for the first time she saw the man who was inside her. He was not letting up. The size of him was extraordinary, and his body was stunningly beautiful. He looked like a professional stud and undoubtedly was. He was probably shorter than Marcus but he was heavier, almost certainly a body builder. Every muscle was perfectly defined and his olive-brown skin was hairless and shiny, as if shaven and oiled. His hair was very black, and his eyes were black too. He was staggeringly handsome, almost too handsome, and he was definitely a pro. He had her bum right on the edge of the bed, his knees wedged against the side of the bed for extra purchase. Marcus, panting slightly, crouched on the bed watching.

‘You bastard, Marcus,’ she hissed.

His grin was devilish.

‘Nooo,’ he coaxed.

His voice was like molten silver, soft and liquid and burning.

‘This is your fantasy, my darling, and we are going to do it to you every way you ever wanted and we are not going to stop until you are begging for mercy and you are going to adore it...’

She closed her eyes in anguish, because she knew it was true. She was going to love this. This really was her fantasy. He knew how to excite her with words and she felt herself moving like hell with the stud again. He had lifted her bum right off the bed now and was pushing his fingers inside her there. She came again, even more violently than the first time. She thought her whole body was going to burst. Marcus was beside himself. He pulled the stud off her and played with her with his fingers, asking her what it felt like in there now. Then he got the stud to lie down and made her climb on top of him and ride him. At first she didn’t think she was going to be able to — he was so big. But she could, she could. While she was doing it, Marcus began to work on her bum, and when he was hard again he climbed astride her and entered her there. He did so with greater ease than ever before. Her every orifice was crying out for it. When he was fully inside her, she had her complete fantasy. Her eyes opened wide and she screamed and screamed as she came. Marcus was glad his flat was soundproofed. This was too much for the stud, professional that he was, he shot into her, but Marcus was not going to be finished for a long time. All night long they kept this up. The stud was an expert masseuse. Halfway through the night he produced scented oils and massaged her whole body until she was crying out for his sex again.

Eventually she became vaguely aware that he had dressed and that Marcus was handing him money. Oh God, she thought. She felt disgusted. Then Marcus was in the bed with her again, holding her close, talking to her, asking her how she liked her surprise, asking her if there was anything she would not do, asking her if she would like three men the next time, or four. Had she ever done it with a woman? Would she do that for him? He’d hire a couple of studs as well, if she liked. Telling her how much he liked to see her do it, asking her if she would like to watch him. He was out of control, he was like a junkie for her, he was hard again. He could not lose his erection that night. She had almost passed out with exhaustion and the excess of sex, she was no longer able to respond or to protest. He rolled her over on her front, pushed three pillows underneath her, and went into her one last delicious time.

It seemed like only five minutes later that she heard the familiar splashing sounds and the whistling in the bathroom. After a while out bounced Marcus. He looked fresh as a mountain stream, flashed a toothy grin, and came and sat on the bed next to her. He smelt of toothpaste and soap. Somebody important had recently told him aftershave wasn’t stylish, so he had stopped using it at once. He tousled her hair, bent over and kissed her lightly on the lips.

‘You are sensational,’ he said. ‘Fucking sensational...’

She stopped him. ‘Marcus, I wish you hadn’t...’

He grinned again.

‘That’s not what you said last night, my beauty.’

She rubbed her eyes. She thought they were probably red and puffy. She was half awake, only half conscious, perhaps. Her whole body felt trampled on and used. She wasn’t going to be able to sit down comfortably for a week. God she felt tacky.

‘That makes it worse...’ she started to explain.

‘Don’t be daft, you’re the sexiest creature in the universe and it’s my mission to help you make the most of it,’ he chuckled.

She desperately wanted to explain how she felt, but she couldn’t, not in the state she was in — and probably never to Marcus. His sexuality was even more frightening than her own, and he never seemed to have any qualms.

‘Marcus, I don’t ever want to do anything like that again,’ she managed to say.

‘What?’ he replied.

His smile was super-confident. He wasn’t really listening to a word she said.

He reached under the bedclothes, he was really motoring now.

‘You could take an army in there, you sexy bitch,’ he muttered. He pulled on his jacket and headed for the door, looking back suddenly over his shoulder.

‘Listen, don’t go to work today. I’ll come back at lunchtime,’ he said.

Jennifer groaned.

‘OK, OK, I know you’re a worn-out woman. No sex. Just champagne and smoked salmon, a cuddle, and a few reminiscences. All right?’

It was like talking to the wall. He really lived in a world of his own when it came to sex. He thought she was in the same world as him, and half the time she was — but not quite. For her there were limits. This morning she knew that for certain, and she was quite overcome with self-disgust. She got out of bed, staggered into the bathroom, stood under the shower, turned on the taps full-force and remained there for several minutes. Then she went back into the bedroom, dressed, and gathered together all the various items of clothing she had ever left in Marcus’s apartment. Having packed everything that belonged to her in a couple of carrier bags, she took off her engagement ring and left it on the dining-room table.

Then she left.

She took a taxi to her flat and when she was inside dialled Marcus’s number and left a message on his answer-phone.

‘You went too far,’ she said. ‘This is the end because I am afraid of what might happen next. I will try to keep out of your way. I never want to see you again. Fantasies are just that, fantasies. I am disgusted with both of us. How could I marry a man who would do what you did last night?’

She hadn’t meant to say so much. The message was supposed to be brief and dignified. Oh God, she was aching all over inside and out. Her lips were swollen and her breasts so tender she couldn’t bear to put her bra on. Between them they had nearly chewed her nipples off — and at the time she had been encouraging them and begging for more. Oh God, Oh God.

She could not face work, she felt terrible. Physically and mentally she was a wreck. From when she was a girl she had sometimes been in awe of her own sexuality. She hated Marcus for taking her to breaking point, and she hated herself for responding the way she had. The reality of her fantasy had exceeded her imagining of it. She had reached heights and depths that she had never even dreamed of, but it all seemed so unsavoury now. In the cool light of day she was filled with self-loathing. She never wanted to let go like that again, and she really did not want to know about the man who could calmly arrange something like that, a man who was supposed to love her, a man who had asked her to marry him. She had fallen into the sweet trap at the height of her sexual excitement. He had planned it in advance, hired some stud, paid for another man to fuck her. She shivered. What would Marcus think of next? She knew that for her own sanity she dare not hang around to find out. Worn out and thoroughly depressed, she crawled thankfully into her own bed and fell instantly asleep.

She was woken by the phone and glanced at her watch. One-thirty. She had slept for four hours. Marcus would be at his flat now and had obviously found both her message and his ring. She pulled the plug out of the phone on the bedside table. Her answering machine could do the work and she didn’t even want to hear the bloody thing ringing.

Twelve

One thing Jennifer knew for certain was that she could not go on working on the same paper as Marcus. She made a few phone calls the following day and landed another job with more ease than she had expected. She had underestimated herself. She was young, talented, and energetic, and her reputation was growing.

She was hired by the Globe as chief feature writer, and immediately threw herself both into her work and into a new relationship. She was desperate to forget Marcus and have nothing more to do with him. Their sexual exploits had really shaken her that night. She couldn’t quite elucidate it, but the feelings of sexual revulsion — as much with herself as with Marcus — which she was now experiencing had cleared her mind, so that her various worries and doubts about him had returned, in spite of the justification he had rather offhandedly offered her. She had to free herself completely.

‘And I’m going to, have no doubts about that,’ she told Anna. ‘I never want to see Marcus Piddell again.’

‘Really,’ replied Anna. ‘Bet you lunch at the Connaught you go back to him.’

‘I just hope your expenses are up to it,’ said Jennifer.

Marcus did not give up easily. He was used to getting what he wanted. At work she dodged his calls and at home she hid behind her answering machine. A couple of times he even door-stepped her office, which surprised her a little because she thought he would have been concerned about his image. She remained resolute, refusing even to stop and talk to him, but knew that if she were to hold out against Marcus’s persistence, she needed something to take her mind off him. And the only something which could possibly do that job for Jennifer Stone would be another man.

And so when nice Michael Appley had shown an interest in her when they met at a dinner party, she had readily embarked on a new affair. Michael was a college lecturer whose subject was history, and all Jennifer’s friends, particularly Anna, believed that he himself would soon be history too. Jennifer found him quite charming, which he was. He was like a great bear, a big man in his mid-thirties, already spreading to fat but attractive enough. He had a beard because he couldn’t be bothered to shave, and wore whatever clothes came first to hand in the mornings. Michael Appley was a complete change after Marcus, and that seemed like a jolly good idea to Jennifer. They went to bed together the first night they met. He was gentle and caring, just how she had imagined he would be. She found him delightful and enjoyed sleeping with him, but should have been warned off, because when they had finished her body invariably still ached for more.

Jennifer was totally on the rebound from Marcus, and quite incapable of a proper emotional commitment to anybody. None the less she convinced herself that she was in love with Michael, and he was definitely in love with her.

They were married within three months and divorced a year later.

Jennifer felt guilty about Michael for the rest of her life. It was only two months after they were married that she strayed for the first time. New sexual opportunity seemed to arise consistently, and Jennifer could rarely resist it. She never again wanted to go as far as she had with Marcus, but his influence on her had been overwhelming. She needed regular, challenging, exciting sex — she couldn’t help it.

Michael tried not to notice. Ultimately she became more and more careless, until he could no longer pretend ignorance of her activities. Deeply hurt, he had asked for a divorce. Jennifer hadn’t even bothered to try to explain. What could she say? She didn’t argue. In fact Michael would probably have liked her to attempt to justify her behaviour, because he secretly wanted to try again with their marriage. He loved her, he just wanted her to behave like a wife.

She, on the other hand, knew that it was hopeless. She needed her own space again. She had been deeply scarred by Marcus and had felt that the love of another man could heal her scars — but in fact she should never have married Michael. It had just been a stupid romantic dream.

Marcus had married only weeks after her. He had wed his editor’s secretary. By the time he became editor of the Daily Recorder the following year, that marriage too was over. He began to telephone Jennifer again, but, amazed at her own determination, she stuck to her resolution. Marcus was the one man who had control over her, their sex life still frightened her, and if she agreed even to meet she suspected she would succumb to him.

Fed up with London, she accepted the chance to go to New York as Features Editor of a paper there owned by the Globe’s parent company.

Eventually Marcus married for the second time. His new wife was nineteen years old, at seventeen years his junior she was little more than half his age, and had a title but no money. It seemed a fair trade.

Marcus sent Jennifer an invitation to the wedding which, in spite of being divorced, he had managed to arrange in a rather grand church on the outskirts of London. Never ceasing to wonder at his cheek, Jennifer declined even to reply.

A few weeks after Marcus’s second set of nuptials, Anna McDonald flew to New York on a business trip and Jennifer took her to her favourite New York restaurant, a delightful but unfashionable establishment where she liked to relax with her real friends. It was tucked away off the beaten track and in no way a place for seeing or being seen, yet suddenly, just as she and Anna were about to order their dinner, Marcus turned up with his new wife.

Jennifer could hardly believe her eyes. She was stunned. It would surely have been stretching credibility even to consider that Marcus had deliberately sleuthed out her regular haunts, but New York was a big town, boasting several thousand restaurants, and he had not seemed inordinately surprised to see her already sitting at a table. Indeed, with his customary self-confidence, he strode purposefully across the restaurant with his new bride in tow and flamboyantly introduced her to the two women.

Her name, it transpired, as Jennifer vaguely recalled from the wedding invitation, was Pamela. Lady Pamela, Marcus pointed out with obvious satisfaction, while explaining with a ridiculously rakish wink that they were on a delayed honeymoon. Pamela was tall, skinny, and horsily good-looking, the kind of looks that you know can only be English upper-class and yet you can’t explain exactly why. Her hair was very dark and skin very pale. She had that assured air about her which so often comes with an obvious public-school education, and in some ways she seemed older than her nineteen years, while retaining the naivety of a young woman who has never had to fight for anything in her life and never expects to.

None the less she seemed quite untroubled at meeting her husband’s ex-partner in such a manner. An immaculately manicured hand was produced for a firm handshake.

‘How lovely to meet you,’ she announced heartily. Unlike Marcus she had yet to bother to modulate her public-school accent, which was pure cut-glass.

‘Good to meet you too,’ muttered Jennifer. The words came out in some kind of dreadful mid-Atlantic drawl. God, this bloody man was the only person in the world who could throw her off balance like this. She felt extremely uncomfortable and very angry with herself. Marcus’s new wife was just a kid and yet it was Jennifer who was behaving like one. She had stood up when the couple approached her table and now wished she hadn’t. Sitting down again, rather clumsily, she groped for her napkin which she had dropped on the floor. With the swift agility she remembered only too well, Marcus picked it up and familiarly placed it on her lap. Jennifer felt herself beginning to blush. Marcus’s gaze was upon her as he rested an arm on his wife’s shoulder. Casually he brushed a finger against Lady Pamela’s neck beneath the heavy dark hair. Jennifer could see that he was scratching her flesh lightly with his fingernail. The young woman shuddered, almost imperceptibly, but Jennifer noticed.

‘So he does that to you, too,’ she thought. And her blush deepened as she had a brief and unwelcome vision of their two bodies together in bed, Marcus with all his mighty sexuality, Marcus doing to this debbie young thing all that he had done to her...

She forced herself to look away, and became aware that Marcus was still staring at her. His eyes were smiling, almost mocking. He flashed a grin. Was it her imagination or did his tongue dart swiftly across those immaculate white teeth? The bastard. He was reading her mind. He knew full well what she was thinking about. She tried desperately to look at ease and knew she was failing. She could not trust herself to speak at all.

Anna came smartly to the rescue. Thank God, as ever, for Anna, who, of course, had not stumbled unnecessarily to her feet, but remained sitting, a picture of composure, throughout the somewhat awkward confrontation. Anna’s eyelashes fluttered briefly. She looked up at Marcus from beneath their pale fringe. Anna McDonald had never particularly liked or trusted Marcus Piddell, and neither did she fear him.

‘Don’t let us keep you newlyweds,’ she said sweetly. ‘I am sure you would rather be alone...’

Mercifully Marcus led his young wife away to a table at the far end of the restaurant. They were elegance on legs, he all Armani and Gucci as usual, she dressed in a style which said, simply, class.

‘Good God, what on earth was all that about?’ asked Anna.

‘I wish I knew,’ said Jennifer. ‘And I wish I hadn’t fallen apart like I did. Without you I think I’d have died.’

‘I doubt that,’ replied Anna. ‘You might have succumbed to his evil clutches again, though...’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He was with his new wife for Heaven’s sake.’ Jennifer was trying very hard to behave like a successful independent woman again.

‘Really?’ said Anna. ‘And what the hell was he doing in this restaurant? It’s hardly New York’s answer to The Ivy is it? I reckon the bugger found out it’s one of your places. He’s probably been dragging his child bride here every night since they’ve been in the city, just waiting to put the pair of you together.’

‘That’s absurd,’ said Jennifer.

‘Is it? I’d never put anything past that man. He wanted to see you wriggle. He’s obsessed with you.’

‘Well I’m certainly not obsessed with him any more.’

‘I do hope that’s true — for your sake.’ The gentle grey eyes were momentarily serious. Then they started to twinkle.

‘It’s just occurred to me — that poor little cow has become blessed with the name of Pam Piddle,’ said Anna, chuckling into her third martini.

‘Piddell,’ corrected Jennifer, smiling easily now. Anna was making her feel better again, as usual.

‘Piddle to me,’ said Anna ‘And always will be...’

It was Anna who later told Jennifer that Marcus had bought a mansion in Kent — which in Anna’s opinion gave the marriage half a chance of working because it meant that with all his city commitments, Marcus had to spend most of the week apart from his wife.

He had risen to become chairman and chief executive of his newspaper group. Jennifer heard about it in New York and wondered idly how he had managed that so swiftly, and also how much power Freemasonry really had in the world order of things. His reign was controversial, decisions were constantly being taken which hit the headlines in other newspapers. They seemed to have no pattern. The left-wing political stance of the newspaper was frequently turned upside down. With Marcus at the helm the Recorder appeared to have little or no direction. It did of course — it went unfailingly the way which suited the aims of Marcus and those who pulled his strings.

None the less the paper kept its circulation and its profitability, because Marcus was an excellent newspaperman who employed the best journalists and insisted on the best stories, both when he was editor and later — as long as they did not interfere with any of his masterplans. For the readers the Recorder was still the best popular paper going. Only the readers mattered — and how they mattered!

When the Recorder somersaulted right on to its head and backed the Conservatives at a crucial general election, Marcus and his newspaper were widely credited with having brought about what seemed unthinkable at the time — a Tory victory over the incumbent Labour government. Marcus was duly rewarded with a knighthood.

In New York, Jennifer chuckled to herself. Trust Marcus. He had a wife with a title so he would have to match it, and he had promptly done so. Everything that she read about him told her that he was becoming more and more powerful. His integrity was frequently questioned in the papers, but then, wasn’t that the case for any super-successful man?

In New York, one sunny Sunday morning, the phone rang in Jennifer’s apartment. Her mother was on the line. Her father had just suffered a major heart attack and been rushed to hospital.

Jennifer took Concorde out of John F. Kennedy Airport. She couldn’t mess around. She dreaded that her father might die before she reached him. And when she arrived at Heathrow and immediately called Devon, her worst fears were realised. She tried to remember when she had last been home to Pelham Bay and couldn’t quite. She hired a car at the airport, and could not stop crying throughout the three-and-a-half-hour journey to North Devon — she shed tears of grief for the father she had truly adored, and tears of guilt too. As is so often the case, the guilt was probably hardest to bear.

The funeral was well attended and curiously comforting. Her brother Steve had flown back from his home in Australia. If Mrs Stone wished that just one of her two children lived near to her, she never said so.

As she stood by her mother’s side in Pelham Bay’s pretty little church, Jennifer was surrounded by familiar faces from her past. She spotted Bill Turpin sitting at the back. He hadn’t changed a bit. Strange how he always stood out, that man. She had forgotten that her father even knew him, but then, her father knew everybody.

Todd Mallett was there, a sergeant now. More solid and dependable-looking than ever.

Outside the church he appeared quietly at her side and took her hand briefly.

‘He was a good man, I’m sorry Jenny,’ he said. She held her tears back and thanked him for his sympathy.

‘You’re a good man, too, Todd,’ she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead she asked him about Angela and his family; three fine boys, she had heard.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Bill Turpin slipping quietly away, speaking to nobody. Typical of what she remembered of the strange old man.

Johnny Cooke’s parents were also there. It was the first time Jennifer had seen them since the trial, how many years before? She had not recognised them at first, but they had attracted her attention, even through her distress at her father’s death. Mr and Mrs Cooke had a weariness about them. Their son was still in jail. Mabel Cooke continued to make her monthly visits. Charlie Cooke just pretended Johnny had never existed. They barely raised their heads during or after the service. Jennifer’s mother, kindly even in grief, had sought them out in the churchyard and invited them back to her home afterwards to join the family and other mourners.

Mrs Cooke looked grateful, but shook her head.

‘No dear, thank you,’ she said. ‘We just came to pay our respects...’

‘Who was that?’ Jennifer had asked.

‘You know them — that Johnny Cooke’s poor parents,’ her mother replied. ‘Thank God I’ve got you and Steve.’

Jennifer had held her close in the car as they were driven back to the little terraced house. She vowed to visit more often in future. But she didn’t of course.

Thirteen

Jennifer didn’t even tell Anna McDonald at first when she started to see Marcus again. All the half-told stories about him and his activities, both personal and professional, over the years made her feel uneasy and slightly embarrassed. From the moment Marcus had started to rise to power she’d suspected that she would find many of his business dealings shocking. Yet that would probably be so with most big businessmen. And Marcus had become one of the biggest. A genuine tycoon. Chairman of a giant publishing house with a property company and a chain of launderettes also under his wing. Launderettes? Trust Marcus. His very first business venture had been to buy a launderette soon after he first arrived in London in 1970. It was a boom time for that business and Marcus was always quick to spot the main chance. Most unlike a journalist. Jennifer remembered asking at the time how he had found the money for such a venture. A bank loan, he had replied shortly. It seemed reasonable, because although he had little or no collateral, if there was one man who could talk a bank into a loan for no good reason at all it would be Marcus Piddell. And nothing had changed.

His empire frequently brought him to New York, and for the last few months he had been determinedly wooing her. It had been the previous year that he had telephoned her out of the blue. Before that their break had been total and, apart from the bizarre restaurant meeting, she had not seen or heard from him since his marriage. He had explained on the phone that he was in town and was lunching with an American writer he knew Jennifer had always admired. He wondered if she would like to join them.

Her warning mechanism sparked into action. None the less she hesitated before replying. He was quick.

‘Look Jennifer, I know it’s long over for us and I am not going to try to start it again, I promise you. I just thought that after all this time we could be friends and I know you would like to meet this guy.’

It was a cliché, but it worked. Probably because she wanted it to. Jennifer met the two men at The Russian Tea Rooms as instructed. The American writer was delightful and brilliant and Jennifer did indeed enjoy meeting him. Marcus was charm itself. But then he would be, wouldn’t he? He talked about his aristocratic young wife a lot, giving Jennifer just the odd sidelong glance to see how she was taking his remarks.

At the end of lunch he pecked her lightly on the cheek and said he would be back in New York soon and maybe they could go to the theatre or something. She walked alone back to her office, suddenly aware that she was vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t made a pass at her. She shook herself angrily. She was not going to fall into the Marcus Piddell trap again. He would never change. She knew for certain that, one way or another, further involvement with him would mean the end of the last of her self-esteem.

She was having an affair with a married lawyer at the time. The arrangement suited her perfectly. It wasn’t really an affair, certainly not a love affair, certainly not on her side. She wasn’t so sure about him. She would have to watch that. But so far so good. After Marcus and then Michael, with the guilt of that still heavy on her shoulders, it was going to be a long time before she was ready for emotional involvement again. Sometimes she thought she never would be.

And she would not think about sex with Marcus. She would not. Only of that last degrading night after which she had never wanted to see him again. Well, perhaps he had changed, but no, she would not even consider it. He would never change, would never lose his extreme sexuality, his brinkmanship. Anyway he was married. And she pitied his wife, or, if the truth be told, half pitied and half envied her. Enough. It was over between her and Marcus and would remain so.

Three weeks later Marcus called again. He had two tickets for a Broadway show. Would she like to go along? For old times’ sake, nothing more. He took her to supper afterwards at The River Cafe in Brooklyn, from which they could look across at the illuminated shape of Manhattan, then he took her home to her apartment in the chauffeur-driven limo which conveyed him around town nowadays. He was the perfect gentleman. From the foyer of her apartment block she watched his car leave, aware again of vague disappointment. This was ridiculous.

And so every two or three weeks Marcus would turn up and they would dine together or go to the theatre. They talked of his business empire. He appeared quite frank. Without embarrassment he discussed the suspicions voiced against him and dismissed it all as jealousy. He was convincing, as always.

Each time they met his manners were perfect. But there was no mistaking the longing in his eyes. She felt he was courting her, and she was right. Eventually one night he suddenly told her that he was divorcing his wife. Startled, she asked him why.

He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘It was another mistake,’ he said.

‘Is that all?’ she asked. ‘Simple as that? You make it sound like ordering the wrong meal in a restaurant.’

He shook his head. ‘Pamela wanted children. I thought I did too. Since seeing you again I have realised there is only one woman in the world I want to be the mother of my children.’

He looked at her directly. She did not want to meet his gaze.

‘I have changed, Jennifer,’ he said. ‘Sex isn’t everything any more. If I could relive one night of my life and do it differently it would be the night I lost you.’

She felt herself begin to melt. How was it that he could still do this to her?

‘I have always wanted to marry you. I still want to marry you,’ he continued.

Then he proposed to her. They were in his hotel suite. They were supposed to be going to the theatre. She bet he hadn’t even bought the tickets. It wasn’t going to be that easy, she thought, but she accepted that she was probably kidding herself.

‘You are married already, Marcus,’ she pointed out flatly.

‘I told you, we are getting divorced,’ he said.

‘You will never change,’ she said.

And her answer was no. No she would not marry him, even if he was free. He didn’t seem to listen. Typical Marcus. He was still staring at her, allowing his eyes to undress her.

‘I want you, Jennifer,’ he said. ‘And from now on it will be only you, I promise.’

She supposed it was inevitable. She allowed herself to be led into the bedroom. The sex was as extraordinary as ever; but he was more careful, more gentle, more affectionate. Maybe he had changed after all. Thankfully, he was just as exciting. He reduced her to a trembling wreck, unaware again of anything in the whole world except her own sexuality. Only he could drive her to those kind of extremes, only he could make her entire body shake with desire, only he could make her beg for more and more. It was just the same as it had always been, and she realised how much she had missed it.

The next night she went out with Marcus again. He said he had been on to his lawyers in London. They reckoned they could rush the divorce through in a couple of months, and that did not surprise her. His name pulled strings and he had the knack of getting his own way fast — she knew that. She was afraid and excited all over again. Damn Marcus Piddell. She feared she was going to have to give him one more chance. She wanted to believe so much that this time it would be all right, yet she tried very hard not to let him see how close she was to giving in.

Eventually she confessed to Anna that she was seeing Marcus again and even that he had asked her to marry him — but she insisted that she was determined to turn him down. Her best friend was not convinced. ‘Poor bloody Lady Pamela,’ Anna remarked caustically. ‘Never stood a bloody chance.’

‘Nonsense,’ maintained Jennifer. ‘If Marcus goes through with divorcing his wife it will be absolutely nothing to do with me. Seeing him occasionally is one thing, but I have no intention of ever making any kind of commitment to him again.’

Yet she was kidding herself, and she knew it, even though when Marcus returned to the UK she was still refusing to marry him, and continued to resist through two more of his flying visits.

Then, on one of her periodic trips to London, just weeks after his first proposal, he took her to dinner at The King’s Head, a little pub by the river in Wapping. It was unlike him to want to dine anywhere that was not excessively trendy, but he knew how she liked cosy pub restaurants and perhaps he was hoping that the romance of a waterside setting might influence her. Maybe sensing that she was near to agreeing to share her life with him again, he asked her once more if she would marry him. She gazed out of the window wondering idly if Marcus had arranged the stunning full moon as well as everything else, and somewhere in the distance she heard her own voice saying yes.

‘You win, Marcus. I’m probably insane. But yes, I will marry you.’

They had not started the main course. He said nothing in reply. With a wave of his hand he gestured for the bill and paid it. His eyes were inside her head again, inside her body, drilling deep into her. She knew what was going to happen. She felt the old crazy excitement mounting. He took her by the hand and led her from the restaurant. Just down the street there was an alleyway leading to the riverside and he half dragged her into it. ‘We’ll get mugged,’ she protested.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not tonight.’

He led her down the alley until it turned abruptly to the left, into a dead end with the Thames on one side and a disused warehouse on the other. In a shadowed corner away from the glow of the moon, there was a boarded-up window with a wide stone ledge. He backed her against it and lifted her on to the ledge — it was just the right height. Vaguely she thought it was bound to be filthy and that would be the end of her Saint Laurent suit. His eyes did not leave her face as he plunged into her. No preamble. No need. Animal. Basic. He was urgent in her, still staring unblinking at her. Deadly serious.

‘From now on this is for you. Only you. No more games. Just you and me and this. Because it can only be like this for us.’

His words were staccato. It was over very quickly. He was making a point, he was consummating their new engagement. It was like shaking hands on a deal. The thought made her giggle. He was the only man she had ever had sex like that with. In a daft sort of way it was special to them, had been since the scramble by the dustbins at her school all those years ago.

Fourteen

When they got back to his apartment Marcus apologised. Jennifer thought it was the first time she had ever heard him apologise for anything. And she had never seen him look so nervous. She realised how afraid he was of losing her again. He was afraid she had been offended by his alley antics. She had reassured him that she could never resist his gut sexiness — that had been his first appeal to her and it was not going to go away. They were two of a kind. It was just that this time there had to be limits or they would destroy themselves and their relationship. He knew what she meant.

The skirt of her Saint Laurent suit, which had started the day a pale lemon colour, was indeed ruined — its seat now covered in grime. ‘Tomorrow we’ll go shopping. I’ll buy you the shop,’ he said.

‘Flash bugger,’ she replied.

But for the first time the thought crossed her mind that he probably could buy the shop if he wished. Extraordinary.

She never did go back to New York. Marcus’s divorce came through with the kind of smoothness Jennifer knew to expect from him. They were married in the West Indies in the winter of 1987.

‘I told you Lady Pamela never stood a bloody chance,’ said Anna McDonald. ‘And you owe me two lunches at the Connaught. One to cancel out the one I bought you when you married poor old Michael, and the other to settle our bet. I always knew I’d win in the end...’

Uncomfortably aware that her mother deserved far better, Jennifer had told Margaret Stone of her marriage plans on the telephone. ‘Yes, of course I understand you wanting to go away on your own to get married,’ her mother had said, while quite clearly not understanding at all. ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing this time. It would make a change, I’m sure...’

The lawyer lover and the New York apartment were all dispensed with by remote control. Jack at the Globe agreed to have Jennifer back in London as Features Editor, creating a vacancy to do so and pretending not to notice that she had more or less walked out of New York. But then, she was known in Fleet Street for having an impetuous streak, and only a combination of considerable talent and her likeableness allowed her to get away with it. Also Anna was absolutely spot-on right — Jack did indeed adore her, and who knew what other forces were working for her, thanks to Marcus? Even then that thought did occur to her.

One way and another it was an extremely neat operation. It would be, of course: Marcus was a neat man both physically and mentally. His house, his office, even his desk, were always immaculate, and so, Jennifer suspected, was the order of his mind. He never liked mess or loose ends. But she’d had enough of living in America anyway. London was home.

In the sunny splendour of Barbados’s Sandy Lane Hotel they drank too many rum punches and planned their new life together. They would have a baby before it was too late, maybe more than one. They were both ready. On returning to England they bought the house on Richmond Hill. It had plenty of room for a family. Once again they were the media world’s golden couple, only this time even more so.

Two years passed relatively uneventfully and things were still pretty good. But Marcus had changed in many ways. At first Jennifer was sure he was being faithful to her sexually, yet there was so much she did not know about his world. Just as before, he would sometimes disappear for hours on end, maybe a whole day, and nobody in his office ever knew where he was. She asked him about his Freemasonry and he admitted readily enough that, yes indeed, the Masons demanded a great deal of his time nowadays, especially since he was apparently now a member of several lodges and a grand master of more than one. But still she felt uneasy. A few times he said he was embarking on business trips abroad and she discovered by chance that his stories just did not add up. He told her that his business interests were so complex now he could not begin to explain, he could not stop to take anyone else on board. She accepted it more or less because she couldn’t face a confrontation and, looking back, she realised that she had not wanted to rock the boat. She had not wanted there to be anything amiss, she had not wanted another broken marriage. But she was uneasy. His telephone had a scrambler on it, for God’s sake, and, he never failed to take most of his calls behind a firmly closed door as far away from her as possible — just as he had from the very beginning of their relationship. But perhaps all men at his level of success needed to be discreet about their work, she thought to herself. He remained as plausible as ever. You didn’t discuss deals worth millions of pounds on open, unscrambled lines, he said, and there were some kinds of business so delicate and confidential that you did not allow anyone to overhear — not even your wife.

Frequently she would walk into a room when he was talking on the telephone and he would immediately hang up. Once or twice she picked up the phone when it rang and there would be no one at the other end. Classic signs of an affair. But she wanted desperately to trust him. She had thrown in her lot with him.

Their sex life remained as exceptional as it had always been. It was almost twenty years since they had first been together, and their desire for each other was as great as ever. Unusual, she thought. But in spite of the quality and frequency of their lovemaking, Jennifer did not become pregnant. Eventually she went to her gynaecologist for tests. Nothing indicated any reason why she should not have a child, but she was thirty-six years old and her body clock was ticking away.

‘It’ll happen sooner or later, darling, you’ll see,’ Marcus reassured her.

It didn’t happen and eventually her doctors asked to test Marcus. He agreed easily enough; it did not seem to occur to him that the problem might really be his.

Jennifer came home late one night to find him slumped over the kitchen table with a nearly empty whisky bottle by his side. It was the first time she had ever seen him really drunk. Marcus did not like to lose control. Except in bed. He stirred when she entered the room.

‘Wanna drink?’

She nodded and then sat down opposite him. He poured fine malt whisky into a crystal tumbler. Even in despair, Marcus would never allow his standards to drop. Not Marcus. She knew something was very wrong. She waited for him to speak.

‘You’re not gonna bloody believe this,’ he said finally. ‘I’m bloody sterile.’

His eyes were red and swollen. She realised he had been crying. She instinctively reached forward and held his hand.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

They both knew it did. Probably more to him than to her, as it happened.

‘Biggest, horniest bloody dick in bloody town and it’s bloody useless,’ he muttered angrily. ‘Bang bloody bang. An’ all I fire is bloody blanks.’

It was after that that things started to go wrong.

The matter was never discussed again. Nor were any alternatives like adoption. Marcus hardly ever seemed to want to talk to her about anything. He had a grimness about him that she had not been aware of before. For the first time ever the sexual chemistry between them began to let them down. Sometimes Marcus would come home very late and sleep in one of the spare rooms, saying that he had not wanted to wake her. She had been determined that this time she would remain faithful within her marriage. There really was little point in remarrying in your mid-thirties unless that was your intention. But she did stray once or twice. Not because she craved further sexual excitement, but because she felt so alone, so isolated. The emotional side of her relationship with Marcus had always been a little strange. There was no doubt of its strength. But it was all so closely entangled with the sexual magnetism between them. Love was not a word often mentioned. Jennifer had once told Anna that, when she finally married Marcus, her strongest feeling had been one of inevitability. It was her destiny, and whether she loved him or not, and of course she supposed she did, was irrelevant.

When they ultimately parted she experienced the same feeling of inevitability. Probably the way in which it happened was inevitable too. She had become pretty sure that Marcus was again indulging in sexual activities she would rather not know about. But nothing had prepared her for the revelations on that grey, chill October night in 1992.

She had to travel to Paris to negotiate the buy-up of a big Royal scoop with a French magazine, and she was booked on the last flight out of Heathrow. Minutes after the flight was called there was a bomb scare and the entire airport was cleared. She waited an hour or so in the nearby Hilton Hotel and finally decided she had had enough. She would take a taxi home to sleep in her own bed, and catch the first flight the next day.

As her key turned in the latch she sensed that things were not as they should be. The hall was dark but there was a dim light showing through the cracks around the closed door to the living room. It was what she could hear that had turned her blood cold. High-pitched squeals, sobbing, and rhythmic grunting. She threw open the door.

A startled Marcus turned around so that he was looking straight at her. The expression on his face horrified her. His eyes looked crazed. His lips were pulled back over his teeth so that he seemed to be snarling, sweat was pouring from him, the muscles of his neck were bulging with his exertions. He was naked, and leaning over the sofa before him were two young Oriental girls, who were also naked. Marcus was still thrusting into the backside of one of them. Even as he looked into the horrified eyes of his wife, he could not stop his body carrying on with what it was doing. The girls also turned to look at Jennifer, and their faces showed pain and fear. They were weeping. Marcus had later claimed they were at least sixteen, but Jennifer remained sure that they were even younger. They were physically tiny and she knew how big Marcus was.

Jennifer took in the whole sordid scene in seconds. Still clutching her overnight bag for the Paris trip, she bolted for the front door, slammed it behind her, and ran to the Porsche parked in the driveway. Although she had used taxis for her original journey to the airport, she found to her relief that her car keys were in her pocket. Hastily she unlocked the car door, slid behind the wheel, tossing her bag onto the passenger seat, crashed the gears into reverse and roared out of the drive backwards and at speed. She was fortunate that for a brief moment there were no passing vehicles on the road behind the house. Had there been, she would have smashed straight into them, because she had not looked in any direction. As she gunned the car forwards with a clumsy lurch, she was vaguely aware of the front door to the house flying open and a frantic Marcus, precariously clutching an unbuttoned overcoat around his nakedness, tearing down the drive behind her. Too late. Much too late for everything.

She drove back to the Airport Hilton and arranged parking for her car for the duration of the two-day Paris trip. She booked a room for the night, plugged in to a house video and ordered a large meal and a bottle of good claret on room service. She refused to think about what she had just witnessed. All she knew was that this time it really was over between her and Marcus. She did not want to see him again as long as she lived. The man was depraved, and the terrible thing was that she had always suspected it. She had parted from him once before because she was afraid of what he could lead her into. Now she knew that Marcus Piddell could never have taken her halfway towards the depths he was capable of.

Marcus had just been elected a Member of Parliament in her beloved West Country. As usual he had sailed through it, and she had played her role of politician’s wife pretty well too. Yuk. She thought back to the weeks of canvassing. Marcus had stayed in Durraton for the duration and she had travelled down from London every weekend, to stand smilingly alongside him in draughty village halls, even knocking on doors. He was good at the campaigning, and also he had a true knowledge of the West Country. She’d hoped that he would turn out to be a good constituency MP. And certainly, along with his parents and her mother, she had been briefly very proud of Marcus. In spite of all his extraordinary success in the city, and his rise to becoming a newspaper tycoon, it still meant a great deal to him to be given this kind of recognition in the place where he grew up. Jennifer had found his undisguised joy quite disarming, and had shared every moment of his jubilation. Now she wondered what sort of man she had helped into a position of such potential power. Because the one thing she had been sure of from the moment he won the seat was that Marcus would not be content to stay on the back benches for long.

After she had eaten as much of the food as she wanted and drunk most of the claret, Jennifer reached for the phone to call Anna — it was a lifetime’s habit. Then she replaced the receiver in its cradle. What was she going to tell her oldest friend? She had no wish to share even with Anna what she had witnessed that night.

She undressed, climbed into bed and pulled the covers over her head. Strangely she slept quite well, and in the morning, professional to the last, she flew to Paris and negotiated a tough deal. On her return, she found herself a smart service flat in Kensington, and wrote to Marcus telling him she would be paying for it with his credit card until they had sorted out their affairs. She wanted a divorce and she wanted it fast.

Marcus had prevaricated. He had pestered her much as before when she had left him. By his standards he positively grovelled. Certainly he made the same old promises, and told her how much he needed her. He would not discuss divorce.

Every feeling that she had ever had for him had finally been destroyed. She was quite simply disgusted by him and wanted him totally out of her life. She told Anna that much — but she never told her why. ‘You were right, everything you ever thought about him, you were right,’ she said.

‘I didn’t think I ever told you what I thought about him,’ replied Anna.

‘You didn’t have to.’ Jennifer managed a wry smile.

‘I certainly didn’t want to be right,’ Anna continued. ‘I just wanted you to be happy.’

And she questioned Jennifer no further. Anna was always such a good friend, ever-present when needed, to listen or not. Strangely undemanding. Constant.

The national press quickly picked up news of the Piddell’s splitting up, but both Jennifer and Marcus stuck to their official line that they were amicably separated and had no further comment. There wasn’t a lot of mileage in that — a kiss-and-tell was what the anti-Marcus tabloids needed. Half the press pack of Great Britain would have liked to get their hands on almost anything discrediting Marcus Piddell.

Eventually, not believing what she was doing, Jennifer agreed to meet Marcus for a drink one lunchtime on an old river barge that had been turned into a wine bar. It was moored by Waterloo Bridge. The day was sunny, so she suggested a walk along the Embankment and, as they strolled, she told him bluntly that if he did not agree to a divorce immediately and come up with a reasonable settlement in her favour, the story of his sordid sexual habits would suddenly be front-page news.

Marcus had been amazed.

‘Good God, Jennifer, that’s blackmail,’ he had exclaimed.

‘Yes,’ she replied drily. ‘Terrible thing, the collapse of morality, isn’t it?’

The next day she received a letter delivered by messenger from Marcus’s solicitor. It agreed to a divorce by the quickest possible means and Marcus offered the house in Richmond, mortgage fully paid up, and £200,000 cash in full and final settlement. The only condition was that she should not discuss his affairs with any third party. Affairs... she had giggled in spite of herself. The choice of words was more appropriate than perhaps the lawyers were aware.

She agreed at once, knowing that Marcus was probably expecting and wanting her to prolong their association by sticking out for a better deal. After all, that kind of money was just a drop in the ocean to him. But the Richmond house was worth three quarters of a million at the time, and Jennifer just wanted as clean as possible an end to it all.

Soon afterwards Marcus was made a junior minister. A grateful government, in power largely because of the newspapers he still pretty well owned, was only just starting to reward Marcus Piddell. In North Devon they were all fiercely proud of him. Jennifer found it quite sickening.

Back in Pelham Bay, Johnny Cooke found the rise and rise of Mark Piddle even more sickening than Jennifer did. By 1992 Johnny had been a free man for four years. Or had he? Johnny’s life sentence lasted seventeen years — it might have been less had it not been for recommendations of a long sentence given by the judge at his trial.

But for Johnny it really did feel like a lifetime. The years before his sentence now seemed just a dream. The years in prison felt as if they had happened to someone else. When he first went to Dartmoor it was the other way around. It was the prison which was unreal, a kind of grim fantasy place. By the time he left, prison had become dreadful reality, his complete and only world.

Gradually, over the long months and years, his condition of imprisonment began to change. He became more prison wise, and managed to wheedle his way into the more trusted jobs. Being allowed to work in the prison gardens, among plants and flowers, ultimately preserved his sanity. That and reading. He was finally allowed almost unlimited use of the prison library, and found great solace in books. Johnny had first learned the joy of losing himself in a book when he was still at school. Even back then he had always felt somehow awkward, out of place, different.

Now, the grim reality of his loss of liberty, even the oppressive way in which the walls of his cell seemed to close in on him, all disappeared when he was reading. Only his body remained within the granite of The Moor, his soul escaped to roam free as the wind whistling across the tors towards the ocean he so much yearned to see again.

Johnny was to remain grateful for the rest of his life for having been given the ability to bury his entire being inside the magic world of print on page.

Books saved his sanity. The physical labour in the garden, combined with almost daily workouts in the prison gymnasium, saved his body from decline and restored much of the strength Johnny had lost in the early years. He almost wallowed in building up his body. He became obsessed with muscle development and with stretching his muscles at work in the garden. There was, after all, nothing else. When the time eventually came for him to leave jail, he was not sure that he wanted to go. He had become afraid of the world outside. He was completely institutionalised.

When he finally went home to his mother’s house in Durraton in 1988 — his father had died while he was inside or he doubted he would have been welcome there — Johnny perversely experienced the same sort of near breakdown which he had gone through when he was sent to prison in the first place. The ability to come and go when he pleased, and do and be whatever he wanted on a whim, terrified the life out of him. His mother fussed dutifully.

‘You’re my boy, and there’s always a place for you in this house,’ she told him stoically.

He had no idea where else he could have gone — he had been imprisoned as a boy and emerged a man who had never experienced freedom. The attitudes of alleged friends, neighbours and people he met in the town numbed him. They nudged and stared and made no attempt at understanding, and certainly none of them wanted to employ him. Why should they, he thought? He was after all a convicted murderer. He did not feel free at all. He remained imprisoned within his heart every bit as much as he had ever been by the iron bars and granite walls of Dartmoor.

It was Bill Turpin who finally released him. Bill Turpin who gave Johnny the opportunity to start his life again, to regain his self-respect and at least to look for a reason for carrying on. It took a long time — but it was a beginning.

From the moment of his release from jail, Johnny was drawn to Pelham Bay. The might of the sea entranced him, as it had always done, and anyway, Pelham Bay was the only place which seemed to mean anything to him any more. This was where it had all happened...

Then one day, as he stood by the sea wall staring out at the ocean, just as Bill Turpin had all those years ago, the old man had appeared silently at his side and offered him a job. Right out of the blue. ‘Nought much to start with, look after my fruit machines, keep an eye on the deckchair boys, nought much, but us’ll see,’ said Bill.

‘Why?’ asked Johnny. In his state of mind it was all he could think of to say.

Bill Turpin sucked on his old black pipe — the same one, Johnny reckoned. ‘I never thought you was a bad lad...’ Bill mused. And he ambled off along the promenade leaving Johnny standing, still bewildered.

Was it guilt, wondered Johnny. Was that it? He had learned at the trial that he had guessed right all those years ago and it had been old Bill who had tipped off the cops, told them about Johnny and Marjorie and seeing them together in the sand dunes. Johnny shook himself. What the hell?

He trotted after the old man, catching him easily. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the job, whatever it is.’

For Jennifer Stone, life went on much the same as it had before — but without Marcus. She returned to Pelham Bay only occasionally, but she did return to break the news of her divorce from Marcus — before it hit the local papers.

Marcus, who could charm for England when he wanted to, had always made a huge fuss of Jennifer’s mother. And Mrs Stone could not help being impressed by him, particularly after he became the local MP. He was what was still referred to in Pelham Bay as ‘a good catch’. Among the many things she did not understand about her daughter and her daughter’s life was why Jennifer had not married Marcus when she first had the chance. After all, the pair of them had been obsessed with each other since Jennifer’s schooldays — and Mrs Stone knew and suspected more about that than anyone. And so this second divorce for Jennifer was a considerable shock as well as a disappointment.

‘Not another one, dear. Whatever is your Aunty Pat going to say this time?’ was Mrs Stone’s first remark.

‘Mother, really!’ said Jennifer, exasperated. Nothing changed in Pelham Bay. For her mother, the biggest problem still of a broken marriage remained the reactions of family, friends and neighbours, and because Marcus was a public figure, the break-up would be all the more embarrassing.

Margaret Stone saw nothing strange in her own reactions. ‘Thank goodness your father isn’t alive to see this,’ she continued. ‘You know how upset he was the last time...’

Jennifer retreated thankfully to the anonymous sanctuary of London. She loved her mother dearly, but often came to the conclusion that they were from different planets.

Not long afterwards, Jennifer Stone was made an assistant editor at the Globe — number three in the hierarchy — although she suspected that was as far as she was going to go.

And so it all might have continued, had Jennifer not endured one office row too many and decided to walk out of the paper. She would have heard about Bill Turpin, of course, and all that was discovered in his cottage. But whether or not she would have become personally involved if she had not physically been in North Devon at the time, she would never know...

To have actually arrived in Pelham Bay at the time of old Bill’s death had seemed like another stroke of destiny. That summer Sunday, twenty-five years earlier, had in one way or another shaped the whole of her life. It had brought her and Mark together, forced her to grow up, introduced her to fear and the darker side of life. She had always known that it had played a part in shaping Mark’s future too, and not just that part which included her.

She relived virtually the whole of her life that afternoon in May 1995 as she lay dozing on the big old bed in her mother’s back bedroom. And by the time she went downstairs again, she had vowed that she would at last try to find the answers to some of those old nagging questions.