Page 30 of Private Lives

‘Well I told him today probably wasn’t a good day.’

‘Why not?’

‘I said you’d be busy.’

‘Busy?’ he spat. ‘I’ve retired, remember? The day is yawning ahead of me like a bloody unfilled tooth.’

Cheeky cow, he had a good mind to call Matthew up right now. He was sure he could feel his blood pressure rising again.

Okay, breathe, he told himself, massaging his chest as he stared out of the window towards the Thames and the tethered spikes of the Albert Bridge. He’d been bullish about the booze, but the truth was he really didn’t want to go through anything like the last week again. After forty years in the fast lane, he’d managed to convince himself that he was pretty indestructible. Well, you got that wrong, didn’t you, old son? Despite the balminess of the late afternoon he shivered. He knew that after such a close brush with death, people were often reinvigorated and liberated, grateful for a second chance. But instead he just felt hollow and lonely.

Loralee was humming to herself in the next room, just a little girl playing dressing up. Larry was under no illusions about his new wife, but he knew she cared about him. Was that enough to sustain him in his retirement? And the bigger question: what the hell was he going to do now?

The last few months had gone past in a blur of snap decisions: marriage, giving up the firm, reaching out to Matthew. They had all seemed like good ideas at the time, but they had left him with an aching hole to fill. The thought of there being no work to do, no meetings to go to, no phone calls to take, it all made his stomach churn.

What did people do when they were retired? Play golf? You might as well go down to the funeral parlour and pick out a headstone now.

In truth, it had been the death of his first wife Katherine that had made Larry reconsider his position. It had bee

n more of a jolt than he’d liked to admit. In his mind, Katherine was still the young, vivacious girl he’d fallen in love with over forty years before. People as energetic and vital as Katherine Donovan didn’t just keel over, did they? He looked down at the bruise on his arm where the nurses had attached his drip, and had to reflect that perhaps they did.

That was why he had given up work, that was why he had handed the firm over to Matty. He simply wanted to make amends for the way he had treated his first wife and his son. The two things had dovetailed together to make the perfect solution. Well, almost perfect. Loralee had been furious, despite the fact that they had more money than they could spend. But then how much would ever be enough for an ambitious young woman like Loralee? He looked up in surprise as he heard his wife’s voice.

‘This was why I said you’d be busy,’ she purred. She was standing at the entrance to the dressing room, one arm draped on the door frame. She was naked except for stilettos, stockings and suspenders, plus a tiny white apron that skimmed her breasts and thighs and a nurse’s hat perched at a jaunty angle, like a drunken sailor. ‘I thought you might need some TLC.’

She walked slowly, seductively over to the bottom of the bed and crawled up towards him, as lithe as a panther.

‘The consultant said you had to start taking regular exercise,’ she growled, pushing him back on to the pillows and beginning to undo his shirt buttons. ‘I think I’ve got just what the doctor ordered.’

He reached up, feeling the soft, smooth curve of her buttocks.

‘Ooh, Mr Donovan, you mustn’t,’ she giggled.

Larry was grateful to feel his cock stiffen. Not bad for a sixty-five-year-old just out of hospital and on beta blockers, he smiled to himself. And all thoughts of calling his son drifted away.

9

‘Excuse me? Could we just pull the sheet up a couple more inches?’ said Matthew, feeling his cheeks redden. ‘The, um, buttocks are in breach again, I’m afraid.’

The director made a sour face, but flapped his hand to an assistant, who scurried over to the bed and gently pulled the white sheet up Erica Sheldon’s back. Matthew puffed his cheeks out and tried not to stare at the long expanse of tanned skin, the slim neck, the spray of deep red hair falling across the pillow. Christ, she was gorgeous.

In normal circumstances, of course, Matthew would have relished the opportunity to inspect the body of one of the world’s most beautiful actresses at close quarters, but this was not normal. Surreal, bizarre, horribly embarrassing, yes. But normal? No. He was here on a sound stage at Shepperton Studios as Erica’s lawyer to make sure the nudity clause of her contract was followed to the letter – and he couldn’t get it wrong. It was his first real task as a partner at Donovan Pierce and he was determined not to screw it up, however far he was out of his comfort zone. He suspected, of course, that this was Helen Pierce’s idea of a joke: the media law equivalent of sending the new apprentice to the store for a glass hammer or a bucket of steam. She was testing him, showing him she was in charge, so he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of getting anything wrong. He had memorised the clause: which underwear Erica was allowed to appear in – ‘tanga, brief or standard bikini, not G-string’ – where the sex scenes were allowed to take place – bedroom, hallway, not bathroom unless obscured by shower curtain – and, in this case, exactly how many millimetres of ‘gluteus maximus indentation’ could be revealed.

Matthew had always been annoyed by legalese, the insistence on using impenetrable long-winded language when plain English would have been just as accurate. ‘You may show the lower back but not the upper crease of the bottom’, for example, would have been much clearer if they had simply put ‘no arse crack’. He began to smile at the idea.

‘Everything all right?’

Matthew looked up suddenly. Erica Sheldon was speaking to him. From a bed. Naked.

‘Fine, yes,’ he said quickly.

‘Are we good to go here?’ she asked, her expression serious.

‘Yes,’ said Matthew, clearing his throat. ‘Good to go.’

‘Just a hint of ass, right?’ she added playfully.

Matthew gave her a thumbs-up, then realised what a dork he must look and turned away, cursing himself.