I really want to do eventually is open an art school where a handful of people can come and paint and enjoy the farm. An arty B&B, I guess.’
‘A far cry from advertising,’ she said, wondering if it had come out cynically.
‘That’s the plan. Always was. To work my arse off for twenty years and then retire.’
Venetia moved her hands across the walls like a sculptor, feeling every bump and crack, tapping on the plasterwork as if she was trying to detect life.
‘Married?’ she said, deliberately avoiding his gaze.
‘Separated. Should get the decree nisi through when we’ve sorted out the financials. As you can imagine, that gets complicated when you’ve just sold your company.’
Venetia was sure she felt a thrill pump through her body as he said the words ‘separated’. She immediately tried to quash the feeling. ‘So it’s not amicable?’
‘She ran off with her personal trainer,’ he said slowly. ‘The cliché.’
‘Kids?’
‘Three girls.’
‘How old?’
‘Seven, nine and twelve.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘Hey, what is this, twenty questions?’
Venetia sat down on a stack of boards in the corner of the room, smoothing down her jeans as she tried to adopt the facial expression of someone completely unbothered by what they had just been told. The truth was, she had already known the answers to Jack’s questions. Before the trip, she hadn’t been able to resist doing a Google search on him, reading all the recent interviews in the trade press. She was embarrassed by the amount of information she had managed to accumulate, but it had certainly given her a clearer picture of the man before her. She knew his preferred public image of an ordinary bloke made good – the Mockney accent, casual clothes, the cheeky-chappie bravado – was just a façade. So he’d started his agency from nothing, but he was cut from a similar cloth to her. His father was a wealthy Shropshire landowner, he’d had a troubled childhood – been expelled from a public school for smoking cannabis and lost his mother as a teenager. He had, she guessed, been driven to succeed for similar reasons, too.
‘Jack, I wouldn’t normally be interested in your private life. But this is how I work,’ she replied as professionally as she could. ‘I need to know how you want to live in this place and I need to know your lifestyle if we are going to do the job this house deserves.’
His eyes toyed with hers. ‘So the fact that I have a seven-year-old means no to glass, chrome and Jacuzzis in every room?’
She was troubled by the flirtation in his voice. ‘Something like that, Jack. I’m not sure piles of glass and hard edges would work well here, anyway.’
‘So what would work? Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?’
Forcing herself to switch back into full-on professional mode, she turned her head to look at him. ‘This place has the most incredibly understated charm.’
‘A little bit like its owner?’ asked Jack.
She studiously ignored him. ‘The place has charm and I want to work with that.’
‘Jonathon! I didn’t expect you to call.’ Venetia felt rattled as she picked up the phone in her hotel bedroom, while simultaneously trying to apply a slick of gloss across her lips.
‘Am I now not allowed to call my wife?’ He was trying to chide her, but she could hear his displeasure.
‘Of course.’
‘What are you doing? Off on the town?’
She laughed nervously. ‘It’s hardly Soho around here.’ She looked at her watch, anxiously realizing she should have met Jack in the lobby more than twenty minutes ago.
‘Anyway, Nina and I were just going out to get some dinner.’
Instantly she felt blood rush to her cheeks. What if he had popped into the office or seen Nina on the street?
‘What I was actually ringing to tell you was that it looks as if I’m going to be in Geneva this weekend,’ said Jonathon. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘But we’re booked into Babington House.’
‘Your little spa fix will have to wait,’ he said coolly. ‘I have to work too, you know.’
There was a knock at the door. She ignored it but it persisted. ‘Look, I’m going to have to go …’
‘Nina?’
Was he mocking her? she thought anxiously, the stab of paranoia returning.
‘Yes,’ she mumbled quietly into the receiver. ‘I have to go. I’ll be back tomorrow by the time you get home for dinner.’
Jack was standing in the frame of the doorway when she opened it. He had changed into a pair of cream trousers and a black T-shirt and, although they had only seen a couple of hours of sun that day, she could see a smattering of latte-coloured freckles across his nose. She was embarrassed to feel a stir in her groin.
‘Thought you’d blown me out,’ said Jack, ‘now come on. You can’t come to this part of the world and not have a real Andalusian night out.’
They got into the four-by-four, which Jack drove higher and higher into the hills. As the sky turned dark and the night closed in, Venetia felt a strange rush of freedom. She was having a good time; a really good time. Jack was great company; banter swelled between them, and she found herself laughing, making jokes. Conversation with Jonathon was so sombre she often doubted whether she had a sense of humour at all. But tonight she felt clever, funny and interesting; she felt worth listening to. Tonight she felt the centre of attention. She wondered if this was how Serena felt every moment of her life.
Glancing over at Jack’s handsome profile as he concentrated on the twists and turns of the road, she caught herself thinking why she was not feeling a stronger sense of guilt. It was as if the deeper they went into rural Spain, the more detached she felt from her life in London. She felt free.
Finally they stopped outside a compact stone building, wrapped in the darkness of the hillside. Coloured bulbs hung in strings at the windows and at least forty cars – beaten-up trucks, old jalopies, even a tractor – were parked on a patch of land alongside it.
‘Where are we?’
‘The best place to see flamenco in about a hundred miles.’
Jack guided her inside confidently, his nods and smiles showing that he already knew half the locals, who were knocking back beers at the bar. They sat at a table near a small raised stage, where plates of tapas were placed in front of them: chorizo in hot pepper sauce, mushrooms swimming in garlic oil, frittatas oozing with red and green peppers.
They were just washing it all down with a big jug of Sangria when a slender man in tight trousers took to the stage with a guitar. His short black hair shone like a crown of patent leather as he watched an exotic, tawny-skinned young woman weave through the crowd towards the stage. She had thick raven hair, her ripe, wasp-waisted body was poured into a black and scarlet satin dress and she walked like a tiger. The music started slowly at first, just long, clear plucks of the guitar strings; the dancer swayed her hips to the slow, sensual beat.
‘This woman is fantastic,’ whispered Jack, touching the top of Venetia’s knee. As the sound swelled around the room, the flamenco dancer’s body began moving more dramatically – at once balletic and graceful but almost animal-like in its power. The music was frenzied now, the dancer, as if hypnotized, gliding across the wooden floor of the stage, the curves and lines of her body captivating the entire audience.
When it was over, Venetia felt her whole body pulsate with raw energy. ‘I think I need some fresh air after that,’ she laughed.
Just then, an old man with a bushy white moustache approached