“Yeah,” I confirm.
“Oh.” Caroline’s expression hardens. “How did that come about?”
“I’m staying with him for a week, and he wanted me to have a relaxing afternoon,” I reply without going into details.
“At his apartment?!” the other two repeat in unison, amazed.
“Michael is always so generous when it comes to helping the less fortunate,” Caroline continues with her digs. “Decent hotels are quite ... expensive.”
“If I can give you some veteran advice,” the curly-haired girl interjects, “sleep with one eye open. No doubt Michael will try to seduce you. When a living female being enters his orbit, he can’t resist. He may be good in bed, but he doesn’t deserve a woman wasting her time on him.”
“And you’ve already wasted a lot,” her friend chuckles to her.
The curly-haired woman, however, doesn’t take it well. “Not as much as you have,” she replies to her through gritted teeth.
“And don’t unpack your suitcases,” adds the other. “Once he’s gotten his fix, he’ll ask you to leave him in peace. No woman has ever lastedmore than forty-eight hours. I hold the record of forty and only because it was over Christmas!”
“Pay no attention to them,” Caroline tells me in a fake friendly tone. “It’s just the way he is ... it’s easier to list the women he hasn’t slept with yet.”
“Like you, for example,” I reply, taking a sip of herbal tea. In a fit of morbid curiosity, a few evenings ago, I asked him if there had ever been anything between him and Caroline Bingley. After all, they lived under the same roof until they were adults, and I had my suspicions. Suspicions that he dispelled: “I’d rather die.”
Her two friends burst out laughing, and she glares at them.
My composure evaporates. “Girls, it was a pleasure chatting with you, but I have to go. I really needed a relaxing afternoon after ten days of nonstop sex with Michael. You’re right, he’s really good in bed, and I needed this little rest. Ah, for the record: I don’t fall into his orbit, so maybe that’s why he’s still interested in me. And if I ever do leave, it won’t be because he’s shown me the door.”
They stare at me in silence, their mouths agape.
“I am a farmer, and you might want to thank people like me because otherwise you’d have to pick those carrots and celery yourselves ... but then, at least then you’d have a way to spend your miserable days.”
And having given them the answer they deserved, I get up to leave with an unpleasant sensation of unease, as if I were in the wrong place.
“How many of your exes will I meet this evening?” I ask Michael in the car on our way to his friends’ house for dinner.
“Where did that come from?”
“I saw Caroline Bingley with her friends Julia and Sophia this afternoon at the spa, and it turns out they’ve both slept with you.”
“That was back in school. Water under the bridge,” he replies. “But knowing them, they probably invented things on purpose to make you jealous.”
“I’m not jealous; it just seems that in London there’s a new conquest of yours around every bend. I want to know if I need to prepare myself tonight.”
“No danger. I’ve never slept with any of my friends’ girlfriends. You can enjoy dinner without fear of treason.”
“I don’t know if I’m cut out to interact with your acquaintances,” I admit with a tightening in my stomach that makes me want to do anything but eat.
“These guys are all really easy, no snobs.” He takes advantage of the red light to kiss me. “Everyone will like you.”
When a little later we knock on the door of an apartment in a very chic building overlooking the Thames, my heart pounds with anxiety.
Sebastian, whom I already met at the fair, opens the door, and he and Michael greet each other in a sequence of gestures only brothers would know.
“Come in! You’re the last to arrive, and we’re all starving. It’s so nice see you again, Elisa,” he greets me warmly, inviting me to give him my coat. “Come on, I’ll introduce you around.”
The guests are having an aperitif on the living room sofas. “Hey everyone, let me introduce you to Elisa,” announces Michael. “And behave yourselves. Elisa, this is Duke and Allegra. And this is Jemma and Ashford, the craziest duke and duchess the United Kingdom has ever seen, and Charlotte is Sebastian’s girlfriend. Where are Harring and Cécile?”
“Meeting their wedding planner,” Duke replies, pretending to put a gun to his head.
“I’m not great with names, but to make it up to you I brought some wine,” I say, gesturing toward the case Michael is holding. “I make it myself at Charles’s estate in Tuscany.”
