Pierre. Primula Bond

face reflected in the blackness of his glasses.

      ‘I’m not about to break any other rules, if that’s what you’re getting at. Nurse Jeannie’s on to me as it is. She’s watching me like a hawk.’

      I watch for it, and here it comes. The slight smile, twitching at the upper lip. I can get to him. I know I can.

      ‘Is it breaking the rules to ask you why you looked so sad the other morning? When you went off into a daydream and Nurse Jeanie had to drag you back to the more pressing business of cleaning my cock?’

      I half gasp, half giggle at the sudden introduction of the word into the quiet room.

      ‘Hah! Got your attention, didn’t I? I don’t have much to think about in here other than my own deep dark secrets. I’ve tried asking the other carers to spill, tell me something about their lives, something really searing and intimate, preferably X-rated, but it’s like Big Brother’s watching them. No one will play ball.’

      I get a grip.

      ‘And you think I’ll spill because –’

      ‘Because if you don’t share, if you don’t let out all that angst, it’ll poison you. And you’ll never be able to love again.’

      ‘Pierre Levi, the soothsayer.’ I realise I’m leaning on the bed, my hands by his leg. ‘Who said anything about angst?’

      ‘Written all over that lovely face of yours.’ He grins as he waits for me to get my breath back. ‘Well? Was it to do with the bloke in Rome?’

      ‘What bloke in Rome?’

      ‘The one who broke your heart? Come on. Humour me, Rosie.’ He picks up a pair of dumb-bells. ‘Tell me what that bastard did to you. Get it all off that magnificent chest of yours. Oops, another rule, I dare say. Thou shalt not comment on the contours of the sexy female staff.’

      ‘Rule 63, I think you’ll find.’ I lower my head so he can’t see me smiling. ‘You don’t want to hear about my miserable little life.’

      ‘It’s not a request, Cavalieri.’

      ‘You remember my surname?’

      ‘I remember everything about people I meet. Especially the pretty ones. It used to be my job. I used to read faces. Paint faces. Create faces for a living.’ He puts one of the dumb-bells down, reaches out and takes my arm as I straighten. ‘Which is why I want to know more. I need entertaining in here, Rosie. Otherwise I’m going to go mad.’

      I hesitate. I was lying about the evening job. I’m not due at the bar tonight.

      ‘Think of it as research,’ he presses. ‘I’m thinking of writing a musical set in a clinic.’

      I burst out laughing. I’ve not laughed much in the last year, especially not in the presence of a single white male.

      Pierre grins at me, lifting the dumb-bells up and down, his biceps bulging.

      ‘And I like you, Rosie. There aren’t many people in my life I like or trust, I can tell you.’

      ‘Damning with faint praise?’

      ‘It’s the best you’re going to get.’

      ‘I’ll take it. You’re the second person today who’s told me they like me.’

      And if that gets his attention, so much the better.

      I push myself away from the bed and stretch, running my hands absent-mindedly under my hair, loosening it from its pins. As it starts to fall down my back I realise it’s going to make me hot again, so I catch it before it comes completely undone.

      ‘Come back here, ragamuffin. Let me sort you out. You want to look smart for work tonight, don’t you?’ Pierre puts the dumb-bells down, beckons to me to come over. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m sure a touch of hairdressing is allowed. Call it, I don’t know, grooming. No, that doesn’t sound right. Why am I always so inappropriate when you’re around?’

      ‘Maybe it’s your default setting?’

      I bundle my hair into my hands, still with my back to him. I try to pin it up again, but the grips scatter all over the floor.

      ‘Toilette. That’s the right word. Get over here and let me do it, Cavalieri.’

      I turn reluctantly. ‘This is all a bit random, isn’t it?’

      ‘I never do anything at random.’

      ‘What if Nurse Jeannie walks in?’

      ‘I used to work on fashion shoots. My French pleats are second to none. If the dragon questions it I’ll tell her I’m prepared to offer the same service to everyone in here. For a vast fee.’ He removes his sunglasses and folds them into a case. ‘Now come and sit here where I can reach you, and start talking.’

      ‘It’s hardly entertaining,’ I say as I sit down. ‘The massacre of my relationship.’

      Pierre Levi pulls all the pins out of my hair, puts them in his mouth like an old seamstress and combs it out, away from my hot scalp. His fingers slow as he runs them down to the ends, nearly touching my waist. My head tips involuntarily, relishing the contact, the touch, little electric currents running up my hair to the sensitive roots.

      ‘The bloodier the better! Think of yourself as, I don’t know, Scheherazade. You know, A Thousand and One Nights.’

       ‘Cosa?’

      He separates my hair into strands and rapidly starts to plait it.

      ‘Tell me a story every day. Otherwise I’ll have to kill you.’

      ‘On one condition. That every time I tell you about myself, or even on the days when I don’t, you do ten extra abdominal crunches or whatever the physios tell you to do. That way you can exercise your way out of this gloomy, self-pitying –’

      ‘OK. OK. Deal. I’ll work out. I’ll get stronger. Now start talking.’

      He has stopped stroking my hair and is working briskly, tugging it away from the roots, twisting it into a tight plait, coiling it Heidi-style on top of my head.

      ‘I was living with this guy in Rome. Daniele. He was, he is, a chef. I met him when I was working as a waitress in his restaurant.’

      ‘You’re a grafter, Cavalieri. I’ll give you that.’

      He gives me a little pat to show me he’s finished. His hand rests for a moment in the small of my back, warmth permeating the unyielding fabric of my uniform.

      ‘I came home early from a trip. To surprise him.’

      ‘Fatal.’

      ‘I didn’t call out when I got to the apartment because it was the crack of dawn and I figured he’d still be asleep. I went into our galley kitchen and put some coffee on. The place was a mess. That’s when I should have smelled a rat. Daniele’s your typical tyrannically organised chef. But there was dirty crockery in the sink, empty wine bottles in the rubbish, the remains of a meal on the table.’ I get up. His hand slides off my back as I move away from him to the garden door. ‘I didn’t even stop to wonder why there were two wine glasses and two dinner plates. I just noticed they were smeared with the remains of his signature aubergine sauce. How stupid am I?’

      I pause, watching a pigeon sidestepping along a branch of the spreading beech tree in the centre of the garden.

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘He’d left the knives and forks at right angles on either side of the used plates in the continental fashion. That was odd, too, because our little private joke was that he had learned to place his knife and fork primly together at six o’clock, in the English style.’

      ‘The little details,’ Pierre remarks, dropping a couple of extra hairgrips into a saucer