Chapter 72
Gen
I’m still so angry I can barely function.
That little rendezvous with Anton yesterday reminded me of two of the qualities I dislike the most about him: his business morals are decidedly dodgy, and he always thinks he’s right.
He assumed that, just because he’s okay with unethical—and illegal—practices, I’d be okay with them too. He judged me by his own standards.
Standards which can safely be summed up as the end always justifying the means.
I won’t stand for it. And, far more importantly, I will not stand for him undermining me like that. If Mr High Handed thinks he can sweep in and manipulate and back-channel and meddle like that on my turf, he has another think coming.
His declaration of love is something I’m refusing to think about. What the hell kind of declaration was that? He practically threw the words in my face to make his point and shut me up. He’s shamelessly manipulative.
I daren’t consider, even for a second, that his feelings are real.
I daren’t let myself hope that he sees a future for us. Because I can’t possibly let myself entertain any thoughts on that front while we have an enormous pile of shit to wade through.
I cancelled our evening together last night and told him via text that I’m not interested in seeing him until he’s ready to apologise.
He has to work this out for himself. Heaven forbid a man like Anton should ever take counsel from another human.
He has to be the one to see that he can’t just ride roughshod over my business.
Or my boundaries. The apology has to come from him, rather than my forcing one out of him, so I’m intent on leaving him to stew.
God knows, I can freeze people out with the best of them. If Anton’s forgotten how it feels to have the full force of my disapproval, then he’s about to be reminded pretty damn quickly.
Happily for my desire to stay strong and keep away from him, I’m holding an interview this afternoon with a prospective Alchemy member, and this particular diary event has my interest piqued for a couple of reasons.
One, she’s a celebrity.
And two, she’s requested that we chat not at Alchemy, but at a women-only members’ club in Soho.
It’s a request I’m happy to accommodate.
Aida Russell is a respected BBC TV presenter and documentarian, an American who married a much older member of the British aristocracy and recently divorced him in spectacularly public fashion amidst rumours about his alleged but rampant infidelity.
The tabloids have had a field day with these two.
Not that Aida has made a single comment about the divorce. She’s remained tight-lipped as the tabloid war has waged around them, choosing to act with grace and dignity. But that hasn’t stopped the press speculation about the demise of one of the UK’s favourite imports and the current Lord Russell.
The fact that Alchemy is her next move is fascinating to me, and it’s certainly a welcome distraction from my spiralling thoughts about a certain overbearing billionaire I know.
We meet in a shady corner of her club’s rooftop terrace.
It’s a chic space, the floor tiled in sea-green and white, with ivy and clematis and jasmine jostling for space on the walls.
The women around us are well-heeled and jovial.
I like its vibe a lot. I make a mental note to check out its membership.
I spend far too much of my time with men—it would be healthy for me to have a space where I can come and think and work and socialise away from the men in my professional and personal life.
I smile to myself. Anton would be outraged not to be allowed past these walls.
I’ll definitely apply.
Even in a place as discreet at this, Aida causes a bit of a stir when she arrives.
She looks stunning, as always. She’s impeccably dressed in a plain white t-shirt tucked into tailored khaki shorts that show off her killer, tanned legs.
A scarlet lip, chunky gold necklace, sky-high nude suede heels and a huge quilted Chanel tote complete the look.
I’m pretty sure her lineage is Italian. She certainly looks like the lead in a Fellini movie, with her dark hair curled perfectly into a long bob and the huge, feline eyes she reveals when she tugs off her sunglasses.
Her smile, when she bestows it on me, is face-splitting.
She must be almost a decade older than me, but she’s bloody gorgeous.
‘Thanks for coming here,’ she sighs as she collapses into the wicker chair opposite me and crosses her long legs. ‘It’s still a fucking shit-show out there.’
‘Paps?’ I ask sympathetically.
‘Yeah. Hordes of them.’ She arches her back and raises her arms, raking her fingers unselfconsciously through her hair. ‘They need to get a fucking life. Is it too early for wine?’
‘Not at all,’ I tell her. ‘It’s four o’clock.’
‘Great. I’m gonna need wine for this conversation.’
Aida Russell has made a name for herself by being an intellectual powerhouse and a hard-hitting interviewer who is also not afraid to shoot her mouth off.
She’s articulate, and terrifyingly well-informed, and hilariously witty, the queen of the devastating one-line rejoinder that’s put many a male politician in their place.
She is punchy as fuck, ‘the thinking man’s bit of skirt’, as the British press has delightfully dubbed her. Men who weren’t blessed by the thinking functionality are, inevitably, threatened and horrified by her.
Once our bottle of Sancerre has arrived and our server has poured us each a glass, she dives right in.
‘So, I’ve had shitty marital sex for fifteen years, and I hear you’re the gal to help me change that.’
I almost spit out my wine. I really like this woman. The press has definitely painted her ex-husband as a bit of a lothario, so her damning indictment of his sexual credentials pleases me enormously.
‘Definitely,’ I manage. ‘You thinking of joining Alchemy?’
She sits back and assesses me, parting her lips and licking along the inside of her lower lip. It’s a trademark gesture of hers, completely unconscious, and one that’s made her a huge sex symbol in this country. It’s also populated a million gifs.
If this woman has been having bad sex for a decade and a half, it’s a fucking travesty.
‘I mean, a total fuck-fest might be a little too much for me, right off the bat. No offence.’
‘None taken. It’s a lot. Especially if you’ve been in a long-term relationship.’
‘Right? But’—she leans forward conspiratorially—‘I hear you have a programme that can sort me out.’
I raise my eyebrows. Interesting. ‘Unfurl?’
‘Yes.’ She jabs a fingertip at me. ‘Exactly. Is it just for, you know, actual virgins, or will you take on people who are virgins when it comes to good sex too?’
I laugh. ‘It fulfils all sorts of roles. And yeah, we can definitely accommodate anyone who wants to use it to broaden their horizons for whatever reasons.’
‘I have a couple reasons,’ she says slowly, those feline eyes narrowed as she watches me for my reaction.
‘I wanna rediscover my sexuality. Like, properly. My marriage was a fucking disaster. Everyone has an opinion on me, thanks to the Daily Mail and their horrible little friends. So I’d like to experiment a little.
But I need to feel safe while I’m doing it.
And I definitely need someone who knows what they’re doing. ’
‘Unfurl’s completely bespoke,’ I assure her.
‘We have women come through the programme who are very inexperienced, or who’ve been traumatised.
We also have women who want to shoot the lights out, so they can be with several guys, or women, or both, at the same time.
It really is up to the individual and what you’re looking to achieve. ’
‘Great sex,’ she says immediately, and I laugh. ‘But, yeah, I think one guy’s enough for me right now. I’ll settle for great sex with one guy.’
‘You don’t have to “settle” for anything,’ I tell her. ‘But I take your point. Baby steps. You can always rethink the programme as it goes.’
I walk her through some of her options, some of the ways we’ve structured Unfurl programmes for previous participants who may have backgrounds in common with Aida.
She may not be a virgin, but I know there’ll be no shortage of guys at Alchemy who’d tear off their own arm for a chance with this woman.
There’s a vulnerability about her, a brittleness, that seeps through the bravado and the comedy. But I’ve been in the sex industry long enough to know that the woman right here can be a sexual powerhouse in the right hands.
We just need to find the right guy to bring her back to life. To give her back her confidence and help her own her appetites.
I’m musing on that front when she interrupts my train of thought.
‘The other thing,’ she says, ‘is that I wanna film it.’