looked at him blankly. ‘You got the gear, we got the etiquette book.’ The etiquette book was another one of their grunge-shop purchases; they had already learned a lot from that: don’t drink from the finger-bowls, don’t hold your knife like a pencil, twist the bottle – not the cork – when you open champagne. They studied the thing, quizzed each other over it like the Highway Code. They had it all off perfect. ‘What problem can you possibly have?’
‘Oh come on, George. I mean what if she wants . . . extras?’
‘What, you mean bedroom-type extras?’
‘What the hell else would I mean? And what if I can’t – you know – perform?’
‘Ah, you’ll be fine. And think of it, boy. One hundred big ones,’ said George with a grin. He gave Harry’s foot a hopeful kick. ‘What ya say?’
Harry lay back with a groan. ‘Oh, all right then. I’m in.’
Jackie Sullivan didn’t actually look much of a cougar. More of a mouse, Harry thought when she opened the door to him at her place in Notting Hill. A pretty, nervous mouse wearing a halter-necked floor-length black jersey dress that she looked distinctly uncomfortable in. Her hair was thin, but expensively styled in a blonde bob. Her eyes were huge and a washed-out denim-blue, and there were blotches of bright colour on her cheeks. She wasn’t sure about this, not at all. He could see it writ large in every jittery movement her skinny body made.
Well, neither was he. He’d been bricking it all day, dreading tonight. But her twittering, anxious demeanour made him relax. This was no man-eater. This was a nice little lady who needed reassurance.
‘Hi,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m Harry.’
She stuck out a pale, narrow hand. ‘Jackie,’ she said.
They shook hands. Hers was icy cold.
‘Cab’s waiting,’ he said. ‘Hope you’ve got a coat, it’s freezing out there.’
‘Yes . . . well, you’d better come in for a moment . . .’
She went off upstairs, leaving him standing in the hall. Harry looked around him. Some place. The whole of his and George’s messy little rented flat could fit into this hallway. Expensive-looking antique pieces were everywhere – side tables, chairs, blue and white vases – all lined up along the canary-yellow walls. Harry went over to one of the tables and looked at the array of pictures, all set out in silver frames. Jackie looking younger, with dark hair. Jackie older, with a laughing grey-haired man by her side.
He heard her coming back down the stairs, and turned to look at her with a smile. She was pulling on a big fake-fur wrap, and clutching a black sequinned evening bag. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, gesturing at the photo.
Her face tightened. ‘That’s my husband,’ she said.
Then why isn’t he escorting you? wondered Harry.
‘He died,’ said Jackie, as if reading his thoughts. Suddenly the blue eyes were swimming with tears. ‘Two years ago. This is the first time I’ve been to a social occasion on my own since then.’
Poor little mare, thought Harry. ‘Well,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘You’re not on your own. Are you?’
‘No,’ she said, but the tears were slipping down her cheeks now, making tracks through the hectic splodges of blusher she’d applied. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Harry, and pulled out a clean white hankie and dabbed gently at her face.
At which point Jackie Sullivan – the cougar! What a joke – put her head against the front of his dinner jacket and sobbed her heart out. As she cried she made a high-pitched whining sound, like a beaten puppy. It pulled at his heart to hear it.
They never got to go to her black-tie do. Harry paid off the taxi and they spent the evening in her drawing room, talking about her late husband, her daughter who worked out in Hong Kong, and her lonely, lonely life. And later, when she asked if he would go up to bed with her, just to hold her, that was all, Harry said yes, of course.
And later still, just as dawn was breaking, Harry felt her hand sneaking over to delve inside his Calvins – he’d kept them on last night, not wishing to embarrass her by flaunting his nude body when she had been so careful to keep on her bra and pants. He lay still, surprised and extremely turned on, as she clutched and stroked at his tumescent cock; he had his usual waking-up erection; it felt enormous and her hand on it felt very good indeed.
‘Goodness,’ she murmured. ‘So big. Would you . . .?’ she asked, guiding his hands to her neat little breasts beneath her lacy bra. He could feel that her nipples were hard.
Oh yes. Harry found that he certainly would. He unclipped her bra with practised ease, pulling it off. Rolled her nipples around between thumb and forefinger, kissed and fondled them. He pulled off her pants and stroked her bush, then rolled over on to her, eased her thighs open. He found the ready opening and pushed gently in. She gasped. He could barely see her in the cool dawn light, they were just shadows heaving beneath the covers, and that was fine; this was just anonymous sex. He pumped hard at her, enjoying the usual hot sensations, and she clung to him without a whimper.
Then Harry remembered that he wasn’t wearing a condom – could a forty-year-old woman get pregnant? He thought it was possible, so when he felt his climax coming he slipped out of her, groaning with pleasure as he spilled his seed out over her belly.
Sex with an older woman wasn’t a problem after all. He gave her a long, shuddering orgasm and she cried again, but afterwards she seemed more relaxed. They lay in each other’s arms until it was time for him to go.
‘So what was she like? The Cougar?’ George was hunched over the computer in his bedroom, bashing keys and staring at the screen the afternoon after Harry’s ‘date’ with Jackie Sullivan.
Harry put down fifty pounds beside George’s keyboard and threw himself back on George’s bed, thinking about Jackie, how sweet she’d been, how small and shivery with nerves. And then, when he’d left, how embarrassed – avoiding his gaze, paying him and ushering him out into the dawn like a guilty secret. Which he knew he was. Of course he was. He’d escorted her nowhere. She’d literally just paid him for a chat and for sex. Still . . . Jackie Sullivan had brought out something protective in Harry, something he’d never before suspected was in his personality.
Of course he’d had women before. Plenty of them. He had the height and film-star looks. He was a snappy dresser and he knew exactly what suited him best. He favoured tight black slim-fit jeans, boots, black or white shirts – all of which flattered his pale skin, emphasized his grey eyes and made the best of his upright bearing and the auburn hair that fell in thick glossy waves on to his broad shoulders. Harry had a unique style, and it drew in the women like a magnet.
‘She was okay.’ He shrugged.
George stopped typing, pocketed the fifty and turned his bulky form in the swivel chair to smirk at Harry. ‘What do you mean, okay? You didn’t . . .?’ He made a gesture with his arm.
‘No. I didn’t,’ lied Harry. He was surprised to find that he didn’t want to even suggest to George, let alone talk about, the fact that he had bedded Jackie. Usually they gave each other blow-by-blow accounts of their conquests, but this . . . this was different. The poor little bitch was vulnerable, still in a state of mourning over her dead husband. He suspected she’d acted totally out of character last night, and it had mortified her. Harry didn’t want to turn her pain into sordid entertainment.
‘Well, why the hell not?’ demanded George with a grin. ‘Look at you, boy. Mega babe-attractor. Thought she’d eat you and spit out the bits.’
‘Look, we went out, she paid me, end of.’
George gave Harry a long, thoughtful