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СКАЧАТЬ in her flat, surrounded by narcotic paraphernalia. Thank God she’d found her when she had.

      Everything’s worked out for the best, she thought contentedly, gulping back her delicious chilled rosé and turning her face up to the sun. She was happier with Andy than she’d ever been in her life. Eight months on, she was still waking every day with an idiotic grin on her face.

      Impulsively she leant over and kissed him on the cheek.

      ‘What was that for?’ He smiled at her.

      ‘Nothing really. Just thinking how happy I am that everything’s worked out like it has.’

      With the crema catalana came balloon glasses half filled with ice and hierbas, the potent local hooch made, as its name might suggest, from mountain herbs.

      ‘So how are things in the men’s magazine world?’ Andy asked Mark and Simon, who worked alongside Damian on Stadium, the men’s ‘style’ magazine that liked to think it had more substance than the rest. Simon and Damian were columnists, which involved churning out variations on a superiorly misogynist theme, month after month. Mark was the art director, which gave him so much opportunity to ogle naked female flesh you’d think (erroneously) that he could take it or leave it by now.

      Andy’s career – he was an investigative reporter for one of the better respected broadsheets – earned him grudging respect from Simon and slight resentment from Damian, who had always harboured ambitions in that direction himself. Still, as Simon said, the perks and parties at Stadium more than made up for a little professional jealousy. Or at least they used to.

      ‘Not great, to be honest,’ said Simon. ‘It’s a bloody drag. Sales have been hit badly by the recession. The downmarket rags – Nuts and Zoo and now Front; did they really need another one? How many boobs does the Great British Public need? – are cornering the market.’

      Bella nudged Andy. Stadium was not exactly what you’d call a boob-free zone, though the boobs it showcased tended, with the odd honourable exception, to be smaller. Classier, you see.

      ‘Well that whole bespoke ethos is a bit anachronistic at the moment, isn’t it?’ said Sam, one of the honourable exceptions, in her husky voice, earning a look of surprise from Simon. ‘You should see your face! I’m not that thick, you know, and I’ve been reading Stadium cover-to-cover ever since I first appeared in it. I like to keep up on Marky’s job.’

      Sam had taken up glamour modelling to pay her way through London University, where she was studying philosophy and psychology. She and Mark had met on a shoot. Fond though Bella was of Mark, she reckoned Sam was streets ahead of him intellectually. But she was young and easily impressed and Mark was seriously sexy, in a brawny, doltish sort of way. Today he was wearing tight white jeans and a scarlet racer-back vest top, revealing rippling biceps, triceps, pecs and lats in all their worked-out glory. To say nothing of the vast packet. His head was shaved, his smile crooked. When Bella first met him (long before she experienced the full – ahem – thrust of his lust), she’d had her doubts as to whether he was Arthur or Martha.

      As if to prove the point, he laughed and kissed Sam way more explicitly than manners dictated, groping her left tit and shoving his tongue down her throat. Bella remembered what it was like kissing him and reached for Andy’s hand, flushing suddenly.

      ‘Ugh, get a rrrrroooom, please,’ said Natalia, shuddering. Sam pulled away from Mark and laughed.

      ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He does get carried away sometimes. Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes, surely all that handmade suit and expensive trainers stuff just doesn’t cut it when people can’t even pay their mortgages?’

      ‘It’s aspirational luxury though.’ Simon stuck stubbornly to his guns. ‘People need things to cheer them up when times are tough. Just look at the Busby Berkeley movies of the thirties.’

      ‘Are you comparing Stadium to Busby Berkeley movies?’ Bella laughed. ‘Not sure what your emphatically not gay metrosexual readership would make of that.’

      Simon laughed too. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s too depressing to discuss on such a lovely day, anyway. Are you working on anything interesting at the moment, Andy?’

      ‘Interesting, yes, but not what you’d call uplifting.’ He smiled briefly at Simon and squeezed Bella’s hand, trying to reassure her.

      ‘Try me,’ said Simon.

      ‘Do you remember that piece I did on the Albanian people-traffickers last year?’ As Simon nodded, Andy muttered, ‘People-traffickers … fucking euphemism for what these animals do … Anyway, one of them has tipped me off about another, bigger gang, which controls half the underage brothels in London.’

      ‘Wow,’ said Simon. ‘That’s heavy stuff. Why didn’t he go to the police though?’

      ‘He’s seriously scared of the retributions if it got back to the big boss, who has his spies, even within the police force. He seems to think he can trust me though.’ Andy’s clever eyes were serious behind their glasses. ‘I suppose he can. Even though I still think he’s lower than scum, if we get this lot, hundreds of girls might be saved.’

      ‘Eees the big gang Russian?’ asked Natalia, who was watching and listening intently.

      Andy smiled at her apologetically. ‘’Fraid so.’

      ‘I really wish you could investigate slightly less horrible and dangerous people,’ said Bella, trying to keep her tone light, though the thought of her beloved Andy in danger was tearing her guts to shreds. ‘Or start working for a tabloid, where the extent of your investigative journalism would be rummaging through minor celebs’ dustbins, or even a spot of phone hacking …’

      Andy laughed and kissed her on the forehead.

      ‘Don’t worry about me, my love. You know I’m always careful.’

      Chapter 2

      The newlyweds stood at the edge of the cliff, looking over at the lights in the Old Town.

      ‘Shall we just fuck off to Space and get off our tits instead?’ asked Damian. The after-party was raging colourfully behind them. He was sure he could hear Bella’s dad shouting something inappropriate.

      ‘And leave behind the people we love, who’ve come a long way to be with us, to meet a whole load of strangers we don’t, and who haven’t?’ Poppy laughed and kissed him on the nose, standing on tiptoes to reach.

      ‘I know, I know, it’s just … if we were with a whole load of strangers, it would feel like it was just us, alone, amongst – well, strangers … But now we’re with people who know everything about us, and I want to feel alone with you, Mrs Evans-Wallace.’ He started to kiss her so hard that they both fell onto the scrubby grass, inches away from the cliff-face.

      ‘Well, Mr Wallace-Evans …’ Poppy panted, fumbling at the crotch of his linen trousers, ‘I don’t know about you, but I think we’re pretty alone here.’

      She started licking the top of his cock, and as he moaned, she murmured, ‘Move away from the edge you silly sod, I don’t want to be widowed on my wedding night.’

      They СКАЧАТЬ