Bold as Love Read Free Page B

got to go back to London,’ she announced. ‘Right now. I’m sorry sweetheart. Something desperately important’s come up, it means lots of money.’
    Fio was hazy about how her aunt made a living, but she nodded.
    ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you darling? I’d hate to drag you away. You know Joel, and Mittie.’ These were Carey’s neighbours, a guy couple who lived in the flat upstairs. ‘They’ll look after you, and bring you home tomorrow, or Monday.’
    Fiorinda had been told by her school friends that she would never get a husband, because her Mum was a depressive and had had breast cancer. In the comfortable bourgeois community that surrounded her mother’s house, it was taken for granted that people with bad genes would not reproduce themselves. (It was easier for the community to accept this idea, since it was equally taken for granted that bad genes were almost unknown in people of Indian ancestry). The well—to—do Hindu girls weren’t being cruel. They meant that she should prepare herself for another kind of life, and they were concerned that she showed no sign of doing so. Fiorinda didn’t mind. She liked the feeling of being one of a kind. She liked the feeling that she had nothing to lose. She’d been very surprised at what had happened, but she’d had no qualms about losing her virginity. It might be a big break, and anyway it was worth a shot. In the entertainment business, most people have to start out working for free.
    She went back to London with Carly’s friends, but she knew it wasn’t over. Sure enough, about two weeks later Rufus came to find her. He was waiting in a taxi one afternoon, discreetly parked down the road from the school gates. He took her to a flat, a luxurious but poky little place which he used ‘sometimes—’ he explained vaguely. She knew he’d used it with other girls: she didn’t mind. It was the start of a regular affair. Sometimes he was waiting in the morning, waylaid her and carried her off, and she never reached her classes: sometimes he only ‘borrowed her’ as he put it, for an hour or so. He gave her presents, which had to stay in the flat as she couldn’t take them home, but there was never any suggestion that he would offer her money. She felt that was a good sign. The rewards she’d get for this would be of a different order. Weeks passed. In August, Mum thought Fiorinda was going into school to the holiday—homework club; but she was meeting Rufus. She found that he would talk to her, and plagued him with insatiable, devouring curiosity. He said she asked more questions than a three—year—old. The sexual part of the experience wasn’t very sexy for Fio: but she didn’t mind that. The strange and important thing was that she was actually getting to know him, getting to know this big, flamboyantly handsome grown—up man as a person. Rufus was lagging behind her, but that would change. He would come to recognise Fio as a person, instead of a forbidden pleasure. He would like her, instead of feeling addicted and guilty the way he felt now. She began to think with impatience of the years—at least three years, to be reasonable—that must pass before they could be seen in public together.
    In September, without warning, he vanished.
    She didn’t know the address of their flat. When he stopped coming to pick her up she took the Tube to the approximate location and walked around trying to find it; but she couldn’t. She realised, then, why she’d paid no attention to details like street names. She must have known, though her daydreams had seemed so real, that this was how it would end. He would simply be gone.
    Since the country house party she’d hardly heard from her aunt Carly. She guessed that Carly had found out about her going with Rufus, and naturally didn’t want to get involved. But she had nowhere else to turn so she went to Kensington Church Street. She still had her card for the front entrance, but when she got upstairs