‘Not tonight, if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course, I . . .’

She kissed him, because she did not want him to feel discouraged. His lips were soft, his kisses forceful, and he held her around the waist without groping.

‘Oh! Mr Parker!’

‘Miss Cissé.’ They stepped apart, holding hands. She could see that he had an erection.

‘Would you be a perfect gentleman, and see me to a taxi?’

They kissed at length through the cab window. The meter was running, but neither of them cared.

The moment Massimo kissed her, Christine knew that she had crossed a line, and that there was no going back. From now on, for the foreseeable future, she was leading a double life. If she did not resist the gentle pressure in the small of her back, propelling her towards the waiting car, if she did not pull herself together and say ‘No, Mr Rivelli. I am your counsel. I cannot do this,’ she was jeopardising everything – her application for silk, her professional reputation, her daughter’s future.

The inside of the car was warm, the cream leather upholstery smooth.

Massimo’s hand was on her thigh, his mouth on her neck, as the streetlights slipped by and they glided inexorably towards Butlers Wharf.

Like everything in Rivelli’s life, the apartment looked like a film set, the full-length windows giving vertigo-inducing views over London. Suede furniture stood on deep-pile white carpets. Tropical fish cruised crystal waters in a spotless tank. There was soft music, a delicious scent of lemons.

Their bodies fused together as if each had been designed for the other. They did not tear their clothes off; there was none of that frantic eagerness there had been with Joel. Clothes simply seemed to disappear, and there was just skin on skin, heat and electricity, smoothness and sudden roughness. When he entered her, pressing her pelvis into the soft wool of the carpet, she gasped and closed her eyes, thinking of nothing but the size of him, how hard he was, how she must relax and breathe and let herself adjust to him . . .

And then, when she came to herself and he was fucking her, kissing her hard on the neck, she looked out of the window, across the river, to the lights of the city still burning in the dead of night, and somewhere out there in the dark, silent buildings of the inns of court, brooding, inward-looking, heavy with tradition.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Life settled into something disturbingly like a routine. They got to the studio every morning by nine – Isabelle was no longer sleeping there, but had taken a flat in Spitalfields, twenty minutes’ walk away, crucially passing at least three good coffee shops en route – and were working by half past. What breaks they had were taken up with business discussions. Will partitioned off his little area, so that he could talk on the phone without having to compete with Isabelle’s music.