VII. Serena #2
‘Jarvis,’ she said, as soon as she’d disentangled herself. ‘We shouldn’t.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m so fucking desperate for you. I couldn’t hold it in anymore, Serena. Look. Feel this.’
He took her hand and placed it on his swollen cock. It had been so long since someone had wanted her this much.
‘This is what you do to me.’
He pulled her up from the windowsill and manhandled her roughly to the bed where he climbed on top of her, kissing her neck, her shoulder, her breasts. With one hand, he ripped at her tights and plunged his fingers into her.
‘You’re so wet, you little minx,’ he said.
And she was. She stared at him, overwhelmed by his primal physicality.
It was different from all the sex she’d had before, which had been polite, almost deferential.
Jarvis was claiming her and she couldn’t help but get wetter and wetter as he fucked her with his fingers, sliding them in and out roughly until she came unexpectedly, crying out with the release of it.
He grinned, pleased with himself. He raised his fingers to his mouth and sucked them. She thought she might come again just watching him do that.
‘You,’ he said, kissing her collarbone to punctuate each word, ‘are. Totally. Fucking. Delicious.’
He was gentler now and she was relieved the frenzy had dissipated.
She began to notice his fag breath and the un-popped pimple underneath his right nostril.
She felt strange about what had happened.
It wasn’t the cheating – there’d been enough of that on Ben’s part to make the moral argument that she was entitled to this portion of pleasure.
It was that it was Jarvis, of all people.
Ben’s closest friend. It was crazy. But at the same time, she had wanted so badly to give in to her desire, had wanted to get her own back, right here in the Fitzmaurice family seat.
They’d taken her for granted – all of them – and she felt an addictive tug of power when she thought of what she’d just done.
She wanted more of it. Which was why, when Jarvis texted a few days later and said he’d booked a hotel room and why didn’t she meet him there, she had agreed.
She had checked the joint diary and seen that Ben was visiting an offshore windfarm during the day, ahead of the charity gala in the evening.
Serena would be free to catch the train to London, pay a quick visit to her shaman to realign her chakras, and then get a cab to the hotel.
In the cab, her phone vibrates. A text from Jarvis.
‘R u here yet?’
‘Nearly.’
He responds with a thumbs-up emoji.
The cab pulls up outside a Georgian building in Mayfair.
It’s not a hotel she has heard of but there’s a Union Jack hanging from a flagpole above the awning and a uniformed doorman, which is a good sign.
The reception floor is chequered black and white marble and she is directed to what the hotel staff call ‘the Green Bar’ at the back of the building.
It is a cramped room, with green carpet, green velvet seats and painted green walls.
‘Gosh,’ Serena says, as the receptionist guides her in. ‘Well, it certainly lives up to its name.’
Jarvis is sitting in a tucked-away green velvet booth, his reddish hair even more pronounced against the backdrop.
As Serena slides into the banquette, she notices he’s already ordered her a glass of champagne.
That was thoughtful and, she thinks approvingly, rather masterful.
Like many women of her generation, Serena is constantly caught between wanting men to respect her and wanting them to tell her what she wants.
‘Hello,’ she says. She gives him her best smile and is satisfied to watch him respond.
He licks his lips and reaches across the table to take her hand.
His palm is clammy. She refuses to notice, even though it’s one of her turn-offs.
What did Cressida call it? ‘The ick.’ Too many hours spent watching Love Island, Serena thinks, her mind meandering to thong bikinis and spray tans.
‘I missed you,’ Jarvis is saying. He has a half-drunk negroni in front of him, a single large ice cube touching the edges of the glass.
‘Oh come now, it’s only been a few days,’ she says, although she’s pleased.
Serena removes her hand and fiddles with her earring – one of the diamond studs Ben gave her for Christmas. Jarvis downs the rest of his drink and signals to the waiter for another round. Serena has barely touched her champagne.
‘I keep thinking of …’ she starts, then stops.
‘Yes?’
He doesn’t look at her.
‘The bedroom. At Denby.’
She lowers her voice, even though no one else is in the bar. He smiles.
‘I can’t stop fucking thinking about it,’ Jarvis says, leaning into her now, so close that their foreheads are almost touching. ‘Your tight, wet pussy.’
She pushes down her repugnance and forces herself to keep looking at his face. This, after all, is what she wanted.
‘We need to do that again,’ he says.
She nods, pliable.
‘I’ve got the room key …’
‘We can’t be late for the gala.’
‘We won’t be. We’ve got a couple of hours to do whatever dirty things you have in mind, you filthy bitch.’
The phrase lands like a slap. She stays seated, mesmerised by his crassness. Desire sticks in her throat. An odd little splinter of fear burrows its way inside her.
‘Don’t you worry about … Ben?’ She wishes she hadn’t asked the question; wishes she didn’t care.
‘No, not at all. He’s my best mate. But this isn’t anything to do with him.’
‘I’m his wife.’
Jarvis grimaces.
‘Barely, the way he fucks around.’
She twists her champagne flute in her fingers.
‘Sorry, I can see I’ve upset you,’ Jarvis says. ‘I confess, I always thought you had an … an arrangement.’
‘We do.’
‘And, for my part, Bitsy lets me get on with my own thing. Ben and I – nothing will ever affect our friendship or our business.’
‘Not even sleeping with me?’
‘Do you know how much cash I give him so he can pursue his political ambitions?’
Serena winces. It’s so vulgar to talk about money. The waiter comes with their drinks and takes an age placing them carefully on paper coasters.
‘No, not really,’ she says. ‘I mean, I know it’s a lot but I tend to stay out of all that.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. “A lot.” You could say that.’
He thrusts his fat fingers into a bowl of nuts.
‘In answer to your question, no I’m not worried, Serena.’ He speaks while chewing, cashew debris landing on the table. ‘And you shouldn’t be either.’ He finishes the nuts and then stares at her with intensity. ‘I’ve wanted you for decades, you must know that?’
He’s right. She does.
The first time she and Jarvis met, Serena was twenty-two.
She’d been dating Ben for a few months and was working part-time in a Chelsea art gallery while Ben – older than her by a few years – was already making a lot of money in finance.
Serena had never had a long-term boyfriend before Ben.
She’d had flings, but no one who could sustain her interest. She was bored by the sleek management consultants and red-trousered gentlemen farmers she met in her circle, all of them playing by rules their parents gave them.
Ben was different. He had the background, the breeding and the wealth that was important to Serena, but he also possessed a maverick streak.
On their third date, he persuaded her to let him snort a line of coke from her stomach (and she had such a flat stomach then!).
On their fifth date, he stole a packet of sweets from the local newsagent on their way to a Michelin-starred restaurant, just to show that he could.
He then gave the sweets to a homeless man on the street outside.
‘Redistribution of wealth,’ he said, taking her hand.
She didn’t know anyone else like him. Ben felt the same about her.
He was so good-looking, so effortlessly charming, that he was used to girls melting for him like butter in a pan.
Serena, by contrast, operated with glacial detachment.
To begin with, she wouldn’t even reward his jokes with a smile.
She affected ennui when he launched into stories or gave her compliments.
She pushed him away when he tried to kiss her.
She refused to sleep with him for eight weeks.
She did everything she could to make herself stand out.
She knew she had the beauty – that was a given – but it was important to make him think he couldn’t live without having her.
It worked. He became obsessed with her. Then, one morning in bed, Ben told Serena he wanted her to meet his two best friends, Martin and Jarvis. She assumed they would go out for dinner, the four of them, but Ben shook his head and turned to face her on the pillow, leaning on the crook of his arm.
‘No. Martin’s … well, he’s sensitive. The two of them don’t exactly get on. We’d need to do it separately.’
‘OK,’ she said, although she thought it odd.
The dinner with Martin, in a trendy rooftop restaurant with floor-to-ceiling glass, was not especially successful.
Serena found him smug and a bit creepy; Martin, she felt, thought her trivial and shallow.
She was expecting Jarvis to be the same and wondered if Ben surrounded himself with needy acolytes who were half in love with him.
But, a few days later, when Ben invited her over to meet Jarvis, she saw she’d been wrong.
It was a Thursday night when she made her way over to Ben’s Kensington mews house where Martin also lived (rent-free, she realised later).
No one heard her ring the bell so she let herself in through the unlocked front door.
When she entered the kitchen, Jarvis and Ben were holding either end of a wooden ski with hollowed-out spaces for shot glasses.
‘Get it down, you Zulu warrior!’ Ben was singing. ‘Get it dooowwwwn you Zulu prince, prince prince!’