Lloyd's hands flew from Maria's shoulders; he looked furious and for a second I thought he might slap me. I wanted him to slap me. I wanted to fight him. Bring it on, sang my blood.
Instead, he made as dignified an exit as he could muster, stopping briefly beside me and waiting until I deigned to look him in the eye. 'We're having words later, Sophie,' he claimed. Hah. Not if I can help it.
I snorted and flapped him away. Phew. He was gone. There is only so much of Lloyd's presence I can handle without going terribly wrong. Wrong. It was so wrong. I should never have done it.
I led him up the stairs to the first-floor flat, wondering vaguely what Mrs Treadway opposite might say if she saw us. Unbelievably, I had never brought a man here before. Mrs Treadway would sometimes ask me if I had a 'someone special' and I would laugh and shake my head, making noises about my busy work schedule and my photography. She would sigh and advise me not to leave it too late. I think she worried that I was lonely.
But Mrs Treadway's door didn't open; she was celebrating Christmas with her loved ones, like everyone else except for me and Lloyd.
I thought about changing my mind even as I turned the key in the lock, but he kept a hand in the small of my back and gently nudged me across the threshold, and then it was too late. He was in.
'Do you want a drink or something?' I asked, feeling stupidly shy and inarticulate.
'No,' he said, his hand at the back of my neck now, fingers combing the roots of my hair. 'I want to see your bedroom.'
'I don't have one,' I confessed with a nervous half-laugh. 'I use it as my darkroom. I have a sofabed in the living room.'
'Then lead on, Macduff,' he said, the silly phrase revealing his own nervousness. He kissed one of the lovebites on my neck. His palpable desire weakened me. He was expecting to stay the night.
'I didn't say you could stay,' I told him, even as I was throwing cushions off the sofa and watching him wrestle with the iron bedframe.
'I can, though.' He said it calmly, looking up through his floppy curtains of hair. I always thought his eyes were shifty but now they looked dark, the irises a tiny ring around gigantic black pupils. 'You don't want me to go, do you?'
The lifeline. I could grab it or toss it away. I hesitated, which was the equivalent of flinging it to the seagulls. He broke into my moment of vacillation with a smile.
'Ah, I see I was right. You want me to stay.'
'I don't,' I said obstinately. It galled me to the core to have to admit that I did want him here.
'I don't believe you,' he said lightly. He threw the cushions back on to the bed and knelt on the mattress, holding out an arm. 'Come here.'
What was it about him? Was it a pheremonal thing? Was there a secret compartment in my soul that only opened for him? Against my better judgement, I joined him on the bed.
And then there was such kissing, such licking, such laying on of hands, such sighing into mouths, such pinching and stroking that my dark inhibitions evanesced and I found myself for the first time following instincts rather than internal scripts. Liberated and terrified, I let Lloyd do this thing to me. I let him be tender and slow and steady and all those other qualities I had derided and avoided. 'Making love', such a sappy phrase, but I could not think of a satisfying alternative. He watched my face throughout, and he made me watch his, and I had never been so afraid, so fragile, so giving of myself. When it was done and we were spent and I lay in his arms, seeing swirly patterns in the dark, he said, 'I can't let you go now. You do realise that, don't you?'
Maria allowed Jade to comfort and calm her down while I paced between armies of champagne bottles, pleading for enlightenment.
'Can somebody please tell me what all the fuss is about?'
'I got papped,' said Maria suddenly.
'What? Photographed? With one of your famous shags? So?'
'It was a telephoto lens,' said Jade significantly. 'Somebody was out on the balcony. I saw him there!'
'What? You were there too? So what were you doing? Please, my head hurts!'
Jade, more coherent than Maria at this stage, filled me in.
The famous rocker had been watching MTV on a black leather sofa, swigging from a beer bottle, when Maria knocked and came in, wiggling her bottom all the way over to the drinks cabinet, which she replenished on her knees, making sure her hold-up stockings were visible beneath her skirt hem.
'Hey, baby,' drawled the rocker. 'That's a fine booty you got there. Why don't you shake it over here?'
Maria grinned. She liked the direct approach. She shook her fine booty all the way over to the rocker and giggled when he tipped her up and pulled her into his lap.
'You're pretty,' he said, looking directly into her cleavage, which she helpfully exposed a little more, undoing two buttons. 'Are you dirty too?'
'Oh yes,' said Maria eagerly. 'I'm such a slut!'