She turned from the little Japanese-style fountain she’d been admiring.
‘You’re very forceful today, aren’t you?’ she said, smiling. ‘Full of opinions suddenly.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I’ve started to see that all this might work out,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m starting to take myself seriously.’
Jenna came to join him at the wall, looking out over Mayfair.
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘That’s really good. Because you should take yourself seriously. As long as you keep your sense of humour, though, because you’ll go mad without it in this business.’
‘I’m not going to change,’ he said. ‘Just because I’m wearing this poncey suit doesn’t mean I’m going to start talking like Lawrence Harville.’
‘Perish the thought.’
‘What’s that?’
He pointed down to the Shepherd Market area, at the little huddle of exclusive shops and restaurants that clustered around it.
‘Shepherd Market. Some good restaurants, if you fancy eating out later.’
‘No, I mean that shop. That one, all black and gold, next to the one with the little lollipop tree outside the door.’
‘Oh.’ Jenna squinted, then sucked in a breath. ‘My God. A sex shop! In Mayfair!’ She leant over the wall, looking harder. ‘I bet it’s a ferociously expensive one. None of your cheap plastic tat for the locals here.’
Jason nudged her hip with his.
‘Remember what I was saying about dressing you up? Tit for tat,’ he whispered.
‘You don’t mean . . .’
‘Why not? I’m curious. I want a nose round inside. Come on.’
They bade Tabitha farewell and made the short journey to Shepherd Market. The shop was called Le Cinq à Sept, which made Jenna think its clientele was probably very rich men shopping for their mistresses. It gave out an air of the heady and illicit from the very start.
The window wasn’t blacked out, nor was it filled with mannequins in flashy scarlet and black latex, but it was of smoked glass and the display was discreet and tasteful – mainly piles of pretty boxes and well-wrapped parcels with the
odd silver-backed hairbrush or marabou slipper here and there, to give the air of an artfully disarranged boudoir.
‘Is anyone watching us?’ asked Jenna nervously, looking about her, but the area was quiet enough in this post-lunch hour, being off the main tourist drag.
‘Not a soul,’ said Jason. His face was a little flushed from the champagne and his eyes were glittering with excited purpose. ‘Come on. Let’s go in.’
He put a hand on Jenna’s shoulder and escorted her into the shop. A bell jingled in an old-fashioned way that somehow made Jenna feel she was walking into another world, and, in a way, it was.
Quiet classical music played into a room that could have been any fashionable boutique. It was cool after the hot London street, and soothing to the eye after the bleached pavements they had walked to get here.
A linen-suited woman at a counter near the back simply nodded and returned to the catalogue she was browsing.
‘This is nothing like that shop Mia used to work in,’ remarked Jason, looking around him. ‘That were wall-to-wall dildoes.’
‘Jason!’ Jenna flashed a look at the counter. The woman feigned not to have heard.
‘What? I’m in a sex shop. It’s OK to talk about the kind of stuff you’d buy from a sex shop, in a sex shop.’
‘It’s a . . . oh, forget it.’
Jenna had stepped towards one of the rails, fascinated by the sheer, gauzy flim-flammery that floated from the hangers.
‘This is just gorgeous,’ she whispered, fingering the peach and lilac silk underwear set that was first to hand. ‘You’d hardly know you were wearing it though.’