The Apprentice Read online

  A hand comes down on my bare thigh. I look up, and it’s Anne, still smiling faintly, enigmatically.

  Oh no, I think, and I wonder how to tell her I am definitely not up for a threesome with the two of them, that I might fancy James but I don’t fancy her.

  She seems to read my mind, for she shakes her head. ‘But you will be more comfortable upstairs,’ she says. She takes my hand and helps me up from the sofa; the bottom of my dress falls back down over my legs. Leaving my shoes where I kicked them off, I allow myself to be led upstairs. Her hand is firm around mine. She doesn’t speak, and neither do I.

  At the top of the first flight of stairs, she opens a door and gestures me into what I take, from the lack of personal items there, to be a guest room. The curtains are drawn, and incense already burns in a little holder on the mantelpiece – it’s clear she’s prepared the space in advance, that she’s paid careful attention to setting the scene. She seems to have been pretty certain I’d submit to James’s advances.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she says at last, breaking the silence, and she gestures towards the bed. On it I see a crimson silk robe that matches the colour of the bedlinen. I look at her anxiously, feeling absurdly shy at slithering out of my dress given what she’s just seen. Somehow things are different now that James is not here.

  As if sensing my mood shift, my hesitation, Anne fades back and out of the room. ‘Relax,’ I hear her breathe as she leaves me to my own devices. ‘James has a reputation for knowing how to please a woman. You’re in safe hands.’

  As she closes the door behind her, I sit down on the end of the bed and finger the robe. It’s of exquisite quality, and I imagine Anne shopping somewhere in Knightsbridge – Harrods perhaps – picking it out from the rails. It looks unworn, and I wonder if she chose it especially with me in mind.

  Hearing a noise on the stairs, I strip off quickly, then fold my clothes and place them in a neat pile on the easy chair in the corner. I slip into the robe. It feels delicious against my bare skin. I sit back on the bed and let myself recline until my head’s on the soft pillow and I’m stretched out, feet towards the door.

  James appears, a tall lean figure in the doorway. Silhouetted by the brighter light of the hallway, he’s nothing more than an outline, mysterious, even more alluring. I’m glad to have him alone. I smile shyly at him, wondering what on earth I’m doing here, what I’m supposed to do. For a moment Nate flashes up in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t lying to Anne when I said that I loved him, and in many ways I’ll never stop loving him. But I do wonder now if it was good for me, meeting him so young, being exclusive with him for so long, denying myself.

  James sits on the end of the bed, puts one hand on and then around my ankle. Even that, such a small act, elicits a purr of pleasure from me. He’s not even undressed yet, and already I’m leaking onto the robe beneath me, I’m so bloody turned on. And turned on by a fifty- or sixty-something! What would Nate think if he could see me now? What would I have thought myself, if someone had told me this was going to happen?

  And yet here I am, giving myself fully, willing to go wherever James wants to take me. He, however, seems to be stalling for time, running his hands up and down my shins, massaging the backs of my calves with strong, confident fingers. It’s good, of course, but I want so much more than this and I don’t know if I can hold out. I spread my legs, pull the robe up. I want him to know how much I want him.

  There’s a light rap on the door, but, by the time James calls, ‘Come in,’ without betraying any surprise, Anne is already halfway into the room. She makes her way over to a wicker chair in front of the window and sits down without a word.

  I stare at her, but my natural impulse to close my legs is stymied by James’s hands on my knees, bracing them apart. Part of me wants to sit up and tell Anne to bugger off, to just leave us to it. But this is her house, her bed, her friend. I’m fairly sure that, if I objected, she’d call a halt to it all, and I couldn’t bear that, not now that I’m so close to having James inside me. James, for his part, is looking over his shoulder at Anne, apparently still awaiting instructions. Returning his gaze, the latter nods.

  James advances up the bed, takes hold of my pliant thighs and begins jabbing at my pussy lips with his tongue, lapping at my juices, then flicking at my clit, over and over. I raise my hips to meet his mouth, to welcome it, and he slips his hands under my buttocks to support me, his grip firm on each. Feeling my gown fall away from my chest, I take one of my breasts in each hand, squeeze the hard little nuts of my nipples. I’ve never felt so horny in my life.

  It’s not as if I’ve forgotten, as I lie alternately whimpering and swearing, that Anne is there – that would be impossible. But somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. What James is doing to me is all that counts, has unshackled me from all other care or concern. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this turned on, and I’m not letting him stop.

  Beneath his expert tongue I judder to three, four climaxes, my fingertips sunk into his shoulders through his crisp, elegant shirt. My knuckles bear the imprints of my teeth, and tears are pouring down my cheeks. I feel as if I’m being ravaged by some incredible force of nature. And all this with his tongue alone! What’s going to happen when he’s inside me?

  I’m not, it seems, to find out. Anne appears beside us, as if from out of a dream, and touches James lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘Your taxi will be here soon,’ she says in a low voice, as if talking to a sleepwalker or someone who’s been hypnotised.

  James sits up without a word, but he doesn’t appear to feel angry or cheated at all, as I do. Anne’s hand has remained on his shoulder, while he rests one of his on her forearm. For a moment, in the low light, they just look at one another – kindly, it seems to me.

  Lying there, post-orgasmic on my flooded robe, my sex still on display, I feel ridiculous, and suddenly frozen out, unsure of my role. I was James’s lover, but only for the time that Anne, it seems, allowed me to be so. Now she has decreed that it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t tell her how much I want – need – to see James naked, this man who has made me come so exquisitely. Can’t tell her how curious I am to see the body of this man who has been able to make me feel this way, to know what it is to have his dick inside me. I wouldn’t know the words to use.

  Turning back to me, James looks at me tenderly, brushes my hair back from where it is sticking to my sweaty brow and kisses me on the mouth. There’s a hint of a tongue – just a hint, but enough to make me hope that this is not over. Then he stands and follows Anne out of the room and onto the landing.

  I lie on the bed and listen to their footsteps as they head downstairs. For a while there is the low murmur of their voices in the hallway, but, as I try to catch a word here and there, I start to feel woozier and woozier. With my fingers I play at my pussy lips, and before long I have my knees up again and am biting on the back of one hand as I come to the tune of my own fingers, still thinking of James’s tongue on me, of his cock.

  * * *

  When I wake up it’s the middle of the night and I have a raging thirst. The door is closed and a sheet has been pulled up over me, but my hand is still between my legs. A glass of water has appeared on the night table beside me, too. I drink it avidly, telling myself I’ll go back to my own room. But before I can act I’ve lain back on the bed and am sinking into sleep again.

  3: The Morning After

  I SLEEP LATE the next morning, and jump out of bed in a panic, worried that Anne might be mad at me. Here I am, on only my second day here, and she might be pacing in the study or in the kitchen downstairs, full of ideas or letters that need dictating or any of the other stuff for which she’s hired me.

  I shower and brush my teeth hurriedly, slip on a clean shirt and jeans, and head downstairs. My hair is pulled back from my face, which is free of make-up. But despite this, and despite the scrubbing I gave myself under the water jets, I feel dirty. I dread, as I descend to the
kitchen, seeing Anne again after the events of last night, after her witnessing my abandon.

  She’s not there, and her keys are gone from the little enamel dish on the bookcase by the front door, where I noticed she keeps them. From which I deduce that she’s gone out. I feel a definite relief, although I know that I’m only putting off the inevitable and that in many ways it would be better to get it all out of the way now rather than let it ruin my day, this lurking niggle, like faint nausea, in the pit of my belly. It stops me, this feeling, from finishing the toast I make myself in the kitchen, although I manage to stomach a cup of tea, which clears my head a little.

  Then, at a loss in the absence of Anne and any tasks – I look around for a note but she hasn’t left one, and from the sitting room I can hear the sound of the Hoover, meaning that Hettie is in the midst of cleaning up – I decide to go out for a run in the park to get some oxygen pumping through my veins and make me feel clean again.

  Changed into tracksuit bottoms and a vest top, a bottle of water in one hand and my iPod on my hip and in my ears, I leave the house and turn right for the park. It’s a bright late-morning, perhaps a little too warm for running, but I set out at a slow pace and resolve to carry on for a good twenty minutes, to think of nothing but my body, the stretching and relaxing of my muscles, the filling and emptying of my lungs. I want to get into the zone, and so banish thoughts of Anne, and of James Carnaby.

  I enter Kensington Gardens via the Orme Square Gate and head east, running parallel to the Bayswater Road, past the children shrieking with delight in the Diana Memorial Playground, hanging from the rigging of the mock pirate ship that I can glimpse through the trees. Down by the fountains near Lancaster Gate, I halt for a swig of water and to tie an errant shoelace, and then I turn in along the Long Water and run past the Peter Pan statue, before looping back west and circling the Round Pond to bring me back to where I started. I’m not a natural runner, and keeping my breathing measured and regular is such an effort that I really don’t have the mental space to let Anne and James in. When they threaten to do so, I accelerate, push my body a little harder, banish them from the edges of my consciousness, even though I know they’re squirming away inside my head in spite of me.

  At last, feeling cleaned out by the blast of oxygen, I walk out of the park and down Queensway, past the ice rink and the roller-blading concessions, and along past Whiteley’s domed shopping centre. I turn left onto Westbourne Grove and head for the Lebanese juice bar, where I order a mixture of freshly squeezed orange, mango and papaya to rehydrate myself. Sipping it slowly through a straw, I gaze out of the window, watching the world go by. When memories of the events of last night start creeping in, I grab one of the newspapers from the counter and try to concentrate on that.

  It’s when I look up, ten minutes later, that I see Anne walk past, almost as if my thoughts have summoned her up. As I watch her progress across the shopfront, I think how ordinary she looks. She has that edge of chic, of course, that Frenchness to her. But lots of people in London are chic. And lots of people are foreign. She doesn’t stand out in any way. And she certainly doesn’t look like someone who sat and watched two people having sex last night, or almost having sex. I think again of her eyes on my breasts, of the contracting of her throat, and my own throat goes dry. What have I done? I groan under my breath. What the fuck was I thinking? How can I ever go back there?

  I order some baklava from the alluring display cabinet of Middle Eastern mezze and sweets but, as with the toast earlier this morning, I only toy with it, the butterflies in my belly winning out over my hunger. I have to face Anne, I tell myself at last. Even if it’s to go back and be sacked. I am supposed to be on duty, and here I am playing hookie already, even if I did check to see if she’d left me any instructions. I should at least have left her a note to tell her where I was going.

  No, there’s no avoiding going back and seeing her; I feel like running away, but all my possessions are there, in the attic room. Short of following her and waiting until she goes out, then rushing upstairs to fetch my stuff and doing a runner before she gets back, a confrontation of some kind is inevitable. Tossing a handful of coins onto the table to cover my bill and a tip, I stand up and walk out.

  My heart is thumping painfully as I unlock the door to the sound of Radio 4 from the kitchen, suggesting that Anne is indeed home – Hettie, from the sound of it, is hoovering upstairs. My instinct is still to run upstairs, grab my possessions and just leave, but there’s another voice inside me, reminding me of how much I might have to gain from this job, this association with a literary figure. We had all had too much to drink, I reason with myself, and got carried away. After a day or two it will all be forgotten. I enter the kitchen.

  Anne is at the sink, but as she hears me enter and let out a little cough, she turns around and meets my gaze frankly, with no trace of embarrassment. My own cheeks, I can feel it, burn. My legs feel wobbly, my mouth painfully parched, like sheets of paper sticking together.

  Anne doesn’t say anything, which doesn’t help, but instead carries on just looking at me, a little questioning, as if intent on waiting for me to speak first.

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ I manage at last.

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  Anne is a no-bullshit kind of woman, I say to myself. She won’t ease life for other people, defer to the social niceties to help them out. She’s straightforward to the point of brutality. Part of me admires her for that at the same time as hating her. How dare she be so cool and unmoved when she can see how hard this is for me?

  ‘For … er … I looked for a note, but …’

  ‘But what?’ There’s an impatience to her tone. She thinks I’m an idiot.

  ‘I just – I went for a run. There didn’t seem to be … You didn’t tell me what I needed to do.’

  ‘Needed to do?’ For a moment she looks confused, then she smiles – a hard, pinched, even pitying smile. ‘Oh, I see. Work, you mean.’ She looks around her. ‘It’s fine to go for a run. There’s not actually much to do right now, in any case.’

  Her eyes alight on the mountains of books and papers on the dresser, apparently shifted there from the kitchen table before we had dinner with James last night. ‘I suppose …’ she says a little absently. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t mind if you sorted all this mess out.’

  ‘What shall I do with it all?’ I say, trying to hide my disappointment at this onerous task.

  She eyes the piles, shrugs. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says airily, waving one hand as if swatting away a fly. I can tell she doesn’t really care about the mess, that it’s accumulated for months and months and that she’s just trying to find me something to do, something to justify my being here, the hourly rate that she’s paying me.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, to put her out of her misery. ‘How about if I shelve the books, and organise the paperwork into piles? Then you can see if stuff needs acting on, and let me know if I can deal with any of that. The rest I can file.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ she says, but already she’s turning away, preoccupied by some thought that’s crossed her mind as I spoke. I watch her a little enviously. To be filled with creative impulses and ideas and to have the talent to follow through with them – what a joy that must be. I think again of my false starts in cafés, of my struggles to find a subject worth writing about. Anne must be right – I just haven’t lived enough to have anything worth saying. Which is all the more reason to treasure this job and my good luck in finding it, and not to blow it because of my quibbles about last night. Alcohol does funny things to people. I only hope the other two drank enough wine to have only hazy recollections of what happened. Like a dream, it will hopefully fade away over time, until nothing remains but the faintest and most blurred of images.

  Anne has left the kitchen, no doubt keen to get to her study. I stare down at the table, repress a sigh. I’d dreamed of being at the creative coalface, and tidying and filing is not exactly going to set me alight. Still, there’
s always time to be more involved with the creative side of things once Anne is further advanced in her novel. She mentioned that she’s only now at the ideas stage, and presumably things will get more interesting and there’ll be more scope for me as she progresses.

  It doesn’t take me long to work my way through Anne’s mountains. Most of the paperwork can be instantly relegated to the bin – the circulars from local political parties, the out-of-date theatre mail-outs, Anne’s reminders to herself for events now firmly in the past. The rest – unpaid bills, letters from readers forwarded from her publisher, literary periodicals still in their cellophane wrappers – I divide into piles, which I arrange across the table in order of urgency. On top of each I put a note: ‘Outstanding bills – URGENT’, reads the first. Then I turn to the books.

  Anne reviews English-language fiction for a handful of reviews in Paris and elsewhere in France, and much of the teetering pile is made up of unbound proof copies sent to her by publishers. Looking at the titles, I realise that some of them are now too old for her to even bother reviewing. Those I put into a separate stack by the wall, with a note to that effect. The rest I sort into date order and leave in the middle of the table. What appear to be non-review copies, things Anne has bought herself but not got around to reading, I carry into the living room to distribute among the bookshelves. There’s a chance that she wants them in her study, but, if I have to ask her, then she might as well be doing this herself. I know already that part of my role is to take certain executive decisions. I remind myself that if she cared that much she wouldn’t have left them pell-mell on the kitchen table anyway.

  The fiction I slip onto the shelves wherever I find room – a brief look tells me that Anne is not the kind of person to organise her books alphabetically, or by subject matter, or whatever. I make a mental note of where I place each one in the event that she asks me for a certain title in the future, but I don’t anticipate that she will. I’m happy just to have something to focus on to stop my thinking about last night. I’m feeling calmer and more phlegmatic about it all now that I’ve seen Anne again, and resolved to just get on with my job and write off our first evening as a freak incident.