22

Actually Frank surprised Dora that first night. When he said he’d booked a suite, she expected one large bed and a lot of horizontal tango, but no: there were two bedrooms in the suite, and he showed her to the better one of the two and left her there. In fact, he behaved like a proper gent.

Of course, this being Frank, it didn’t last. Of course not. She knew what he was really after, the same thing all men were. But she was determined to make him work for it. When he started in with the flattery and the flowers she was cool and coy, saying what sort of girl did he think she was?

After that, Frank upped his game and the gifts started arriving. Jewels from Bond Street, brought to the hotel and laid out in the lounge area of the suite for her perusal. Dress designers coming over and devising outfits for her.

‘You’re so good to me,’ she told him, and he nearly purred with satisfaction.

But . . . this was Frank. He’d murdered a man in cold blood right in front of her and she couldn’t shake that image from her mind. It was hard to reconcile the Frank who spoiled her and the animal who’d killed so viciously. But they were one and the same.

‘Baby doll, I love to spoil you, you know that,’ he said, and gave her diamonds, bought her dinners, took her to the poshest, swishest of places and showed her off to all his hoodlum mates and their fabulously glamorous girlfriends. She loved all that. Absolutely lapped it up.

But then came the night when payback was expected. When they got back from another great night out, he poured them both a cognac in the lounge area of the suite and then he said: ‘We are going to sleep together tonight, baby doll. That all right with you?’

And what the hell was she supposed to say to that? No, you ugly little creep, fuck off? Two reasons she couldn’t say that. One: she’d be straight out the door and on the streets. And two: if he didn’t kick her out, he would probably murder her instead. She didn’t think for one minute that it would be beyond him to do that.

So she smiled, and drank the brandy – she needed it – and said: ‘All right, Frank.’

And that was it: she was Frank Pargeter’s girl. It was official.

23

Now she’d done the deed and actually slept with Frank even more gifts were coming Dora’s way. Sometimes, when Frank was out ‘doing some business’ – she had no idea what business, exactly – she would spread them all out on the big bed in the suite that Frank kept at the Savoy. Then she would admire them, itemize them. They were far superior to anything Dickie had ever given her.

One: there was the chocolate-brown soft-as-butter leather handbag. Two: the fluffy, delicious-feeling black angora stole that she could drape around her shoulders when she wore a cocktail dress – oh, and he was going to buy her one of those next week – a Dior creation, top of the range, he promised. Three: the emerald-and-diamond encrusted brooch shaped like a star. Four: the silk and chiffon negligee and robe set in a luscious shade of café au lait trimmed with cream Guipure lace.