I thought at first I was dreaming, only my dreams usually brought me out in a cold sweat, had me falling and falling, or running, or landing with a crash, and this one—I lay there, eyes tight shut, trying to find the right word, but not trying too hard, because I didn’t want to wake up.
This dream made me feel safe.
As soon as the word popped into my head, I realised that if I was thinking about it I couldn’t be asleep, and I stopped feeling safe—if that’s really what I had been feeling—and my heart took up its usual just-awake hammering and my eyes flew open, and then my heart just about stopped as it became clear that safe was the last thing I was.
No matter how many martinis I had, I had never before failed to get myself home. This definitely wasn’t home, and I’d had—I counted—two, three martinis at most, which, to someone who had grown as accustomed to them as I had in the last few years, was practically nothing.
I tried not to move, though all my instincts were to run, but he seemed to be asleep, the man I was in bed with—and I really, really didn’t want to wake him up. He was lying on his back, his face turned away from me, towards the wall. He had on a shirt and trousers. And I…
The jet beads that looked so fantastic on the black lace insets of my gold Lanvin dress were digging into my back, but I was still wearing the thing. And everything else. I wiggled my toes. Everything, save for my shoes.
So he hadn’t even tried. I felt curiously insulted, which was strange, because that was the last thing I wanted. Though as I leaned over just the tiniest fraction to take a look at him, I was taken aback to discover my body and my mind didn’t quite agree.
He wasn’t handsome, not in that classic, smooth way of Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino. It was difficult to tell his age, but I reckoned he must be somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. Dark brown hair that looked as if it might wave if it weren’t so short. A swarthy complexion, and even in his sleep there were lines furrowing between those thick brows. A strong nose. A strong face. He looked like a hard man, or he would, were it not for that mouth with its full bottom lip and its intriguing little curl at the corners.
I eased back, the better to take a measure of his body, without really allowing myself to register that’s what I was doing. A sprinkling of hair at his throat, where his shirt was open. A strong body to match his face. Muscled. He was the kind of man you’d see in one of those films of Poppy’s striding across the screen to scoop the heroine up in his arms. You’d be safe there, I thought, with your head on one of those broad shoulders.
Safe. That word again. I didn’t like the idea that it was this man who’d crept into my dreams, so I dragged my eyes away from him to survey my surroundings instead. The room was very masculine, all pale walls and dark furniture. Stark and modern. Clean lines, uncluttered, functional and discreetly expensive. How the hell had I got here?
I was light-headed. My brain was all sharp edges. When I eased back the sheet and slowly, carefully, began to sit up, I had the most awful feeling. Like first-night nerves. That dreadful sense of anticipation and premonition, as if you’re about to step into an abyss. I remembered the party, a flash in my head like a photograph with sound, and the dread deepened. Surely I hadn’t been so stupid?
But I was pretty certain that I had. Biting my lip, I edged out of the bed. The man didn’t stir. My feet touched the soft, pale carpet, and I ran for the door.
* * *
I made it as far as the bathroom, since I didn’t have any shoes, or any money for a taxi-cab either, and I sat on the edge of a huge bath, shaking. In the theatre, people do all sorts of things to calm their nerves and enhance their performance. The white powder in those slim little boxes worn like jewellery these days, that was one way. I’d never tried it. It wasn’t just that I found the whole process of sniffing it off-putting; I wasn’t too sure about the result. Martinis softened the edges of the world and gave a slow slide into oblivion. It seemed to me that white powder had the opposite effect. Why take something that makes the world seem like a brighter place when it’s not?
But last night I’d been just desperate enough to try. It wasn’t work. I never need anything to help me with my work. Nerves are what makes an actress. But after. It was his birthday, you see. Mine, too. It was one of those odd coincidences that Anthony took as a sign when we first met. He was a great one for signs. I turned twenty-nine yesterday. My husband would have been thirty-one. I celebrated with a needle full of cocaine. And just my luck, of course, that rather than making my world sparkle, it made it black. One of my so-called friends helped me to inject it, and after that I don’t remember a thing.
I felt surprisingly well, physically. Anything could have happened. My stomach clenched into a knot then, not with fear, but the opposite, whatever that is. When the cold of that needle pricked my skin, that’s what I’d wanted. Anything. Anything to make me feel something, no matter how bad. And all I’d got was oblivion.
No, that wasn’t true. There was one of those stupid treasure hunts, and I was in a car. And then I was in the street refusing to get back into the car. And then—and then really nothing. I had no idea how I’d got here or who the man in the bed was. But I’d spent the night with him and he hadn’t touched me, and suddenly that wasn’t an insult but extremely reassuring.
I got up and stared at myself in the huge mirror over the wash-basin. Washed clean of powder and lipstick, I looked like a ghost, all white cheeks and big black pools for eyes. I wasn’t beautiful, Poppy is the beauty of the family, but there’s something about the way my face is put together that fits with the fashion. I ran my fingers through what was left of my hair. Anthony would have hated it, but I liked it. They cut it with a razor. I never had it shingled; I preferred it straight. Sharp edges.
People found me intimidating. Some men saw me as a challenge. It wasn’t deliberate, on my part. When Anthony was killed, I simply stopped thinking about that sort of thing. But staring at myself in the mirror, I realised that was a bit of a fib. In dreams, sometimes, recently, those thoughts had been there, and I’d wake up with that particular ache. Watching the faint flush of colour creep up the pale skin of my throat, I couldn’t deny that it was there now. And thinking about that man in the bed, I couldn’t deny it had been there when I’d woken up, too.
What was it about him? Was it that he hadn’t touched me? That he’d slept, fully clothed, beside me, quite indifferent to the charms that so many men would have found irresistible—if sales of those stupid picture postcards were to be believed. But I doubted it was more than the novelty value. Sisters. Poppy and Daisy. The contrast of my dark hair and her blond. That, and the fact that Poppy really was a beauty.
There was a tin of tooth powder on the shelf above the sink. I took some, using my finger as a brush. Today was the first day of my thirtieth year. I’d been a widow for nearly six, which was three times longer than I’d been a wife. Anthony was dead. So many of them were dead. And I might as well be. If I could only prove that I wasn’t.
Dominic
The first surprise was that I’d slept—and with no dreams that I remembered. In fact I’d slept deeply enough for it to take me a moment to remember what had happened. And even then I’d only just realised she was gone, the famous actress, when the door to my bedroom was flung open and there she was, looking none the worse for wear.
Quite the contrary. She stood there, framed in the doorway like some sort of exotic goddess. She didn’t walk across the floor towards me; she seemed to glide. Maybe it was the dress. You could see the outline of her legs through that shimmery gold. They were long legs. And her eyes, in the morning sunshine that filtered through the windows, really did look black. ‘Quite an entrance, Miss Edwards,’ I said, because that’s exactly what it was.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I think, in the circumstances, you might call me Daisy.’ That husky voice again. It gave me goose bumps. I liked that