Scarlet Women. Jessie Keane
Redmond Delaney bought Mira diamonds. She loved diamonds. He bought her furs. She loved those too, but she loved him more.
‘This is just between us,’ he said to her, meaning their love, their lust, whatever the hell it was that drew them together.
Mira nodded her acceptance, but deep down she felt uneasy and hurt. She knew he had parents in Ireland, but there was never any chance that she would meet them. He had a sister too—his twin, Orla. She had met Orla once; they’d been having lunch at a restaurant, and Orla had come in. Reluctantly, Redmond had introduced her to Mira. Orla had looked at Mira like she was contaminated.
So she had become his dirty little secret, one he kept well away from his family. She understood that, even though it pained her. She knew she wasn’t fit for polite society, fit for any society really. Sometimes she even shocked herself. That blackness in her heart sometimes made itself felt in dark moods, wild behaviour. She knew her own weaknesses. She knew that what had been done to her in her childhood had warped her somehow. There were lines that most other people, most normal people, would never cross. But she crossed them every day, with every breath she took, and only occasionally would she think: Jesus, did I really do that?
Not long after their affair began, Redmond bought her a flat in Battersea, close to his family’s breaker’s yard. Not Mayfair—which was what she was used to—but a nice flat in a decent area, a large and sunlit flat which she’d decorated in the latest styles at his considerable expense.
She was happy. William was a distant memory. The brothel she had worked in, the brothel where she met William, had been closed down long ago by the police—so that was all over. But then he already knew that. He made it his business to know things, particularly about Annie Carter and the mob of thugs she controlled.
‘I’m all yours, darling,’ she said, flinging herself into his arms one sunny Sunday afternoon in the sitting room of the new flat.
He’d told her how much he loved her voice, so mellow, so Home Counties. By now Mira knew that he adored the upper classes in general, and they got a kick out of mixing with him, because he was a bad boy and everyone knew it. A bad boy, but a rich boy too—a boy with clout; so the London glitterati flocked around him. From humble beginnings, he had climbed the greasy pole and now he was at the top, with a high-class mistress in tow. She adored him. He adored her. It was love.
‘I was all yours from the minute I first saw you,’ she said against his cheek.
‘Oh?’ Redmond buried his head in her fragrant neck. She wore Shalimar. He loved that too: it was a classic like her, he’d told her.
‘In the dining room at Cliveden.’
‘You noticed me too?’
‘I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. But I had to. Because of William.’
‘He’s the past,’ he said, pulling her in tighter so that she could feel his erection. ‘We’re all that matters now.’
They had christened the new bed in the new flat, and it had been dusk before they were sated, lying together in the warm afterglow.
‘I’m so happy,’ she murmured against his chest.
He was happy too. She was beautiful, polished, exotic—of course he was happy.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ he’d said. ‘I want to know everything.’
He settled down for an erotic treat, and was not disappointed. She reeled out the background he had already imagined her to have. Old family money, pony clubs, private schools, a year at Egglestone being ‘finished’ followed by lavish country-house balls and wild, carefree summer parties at Henley. And then, of course, should have come marriage, babies…
Suddenly she fell silent.
Redmond looked at her face. She was crying, silent tears slipping down on to the pillow.
‘Hey…’ he murmured, and held her tighter.
Faltering, she went on talking.
There had been a pregnancy. Her parents had been ashamed. They had demanded to know who was the father of her child, but she hadn’t told them, she couldn’t tell them that her father’s brother, the beloved uncle who had dandled her on his knee as a child, had impregnated her.
‘What happened then?’ he asked her, wiping away her tears.
‘They sent me away to my cousin’s for the abortion,’ Mira told him, choking to get the words out through her tears.
‘Shh,’ he said, rocking her.
‘And after that,’ she said when she could speak again, ‘I never went home again. Never saw my parents again. Couldn’t stand to see the disappointment in their eyes when they looked at me.’
She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. He stroked her back, feeling oddly relieved. She was like him after all. She too had gone to forbidden places, and lived to tell the tale.
‘You could tell them the truth. It wasn’t your fault. It’s not too late,’ he said.
She shook her head vehemently.
‘Yes it is. My father loves his brother better than anyone in the world, including me. He didn’t believe me then and he wouldn’t believe me now. Neither would my mother. It’s too late. It’s over.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, understanding completely, utterly. ‘So after that you became…?’
She shot a glance back at him. A tight smile.
‘A whore?’ With a heavy sigh she threw herself back on to the pillows. ‘It wasn’t that difficult a transition. Men flocked around me, wined and dined me, bought me jewels. Men always have. My family was dead to me, I had to make my own way and what was I good for? I’d never had any training. Anything beyond arranging a few flowers and making a perfect Sacher torte was beyond me. Stupid, yes? What a way to raise a girl to face the world.’
He said nothing.
‘These men coveted me, wanted to pay for my company on holidays in the Bahamas and dinners at the best restaurants, in exchange for sexual favours. So I drifted into that life. And you know what’s strange? I never felt anything for any of them, never felt a thing, until I met you.’
He nodded, pulled her in close against him. He knew that she had instinctively recognized that taint in his soul, the same taint that was in her. That was what had drawn them so swiftly together. It would never leave either of them.
‘My poor darling,’ he said against her hair, and pushed her hand down to his cock again, because the tale of what her uncle had done to her had aroused him.
Kath, Annie’s cousin, was up in the flat with her three-year-old son, Jimmy Junior, her baby Mo—and Layla. Layla saw Annie coming up the stairs and threw herself at her mother’s legs. She clung on like a small, dark-haired limpet.
Annie scooped Layla up into her arms and smiled into