‘Yes.’
‘Do you really want to know? Or do you only want to know if I say that I was thinking about how sexy you are and how much I’ve wanted to fuck you since the moment we met?’
Johan was silent as he pulled the sheet over himself, as though suddenly deeply uncomfortable with how exposed he was. ‘I’m guessing that means you weren’t thinking about me at all.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Ruby wasn’t sure she really was, but she knew that she didn’t want to endure his self-pity any longer. ‘If it makes you feel better, Iwasthinking that just before I came; it just wasn’t, you know, the tip-over moment … the trigger if you will.’ Ruby tried to keep her tone light and conversational.
‘OK, fine, so tell me what was?’
‘You’ll laugh.’ Ruby hoped he might. ‘I was thinking about Opal catching us, and like … watching.’
He did not laugh. Instead he sat up and lowered his head into his hands. Ruby was finding this whole exchange rather tiresome. Suddenly, her eyelids felt heavy.
‘So this really is all about Opal?’ Johan’s voice was small.
Ruby sighed. She was finding it hard to indulge in Johan’s crisis of confidence. ‘I mean, this is her house, isn’t it? We’re fucking on her sheets, eating her food, doing her bidding in our little play pens whilst she sits back and goads us with her truckloads of cash. This entire thing is about Opal. How could I not be thinking about her?’ Ruby could hear the defensiveness in her tone, and it surprised her. She believed what she was saying; it madesense, and yet it didn’t seem to quite sit right with her gut.
Johan turned then, hitching a tanned, blonde-haired knee onto the mattress to look down at her. ‘You know what I think? That what you just told me is a nice little convenient story that you’ve told yourself, because you don’t want to admit that you’re obsessed with Opal. Not because of your intellectual orartistic curiosity or whatever, but because you want to be like her. You envy her. The formidable Ruby Tongue is just a wannabe social climber like everyone else.’
He shrugged, and Ruby lay there, frozen in place by the onslaught. ‘Beingseenby her, being exposed in front of her, naked, fucking – that’s what you really want. That’s what gets you off. You want her attention.’
Johan had reverted to his old self, bravado flowing. The wounded little boy, desperate for a postcoital cuddle, locked back up into the corner of his subconscious, where he was used to residing. Ruby was mostly relieved. She didn’t like that boy any more than Johan did.
Once the initial sting of his verbal assault had subsided, Ruby reasoned that perhaps he wasn’t so wrong. She was disturbed by how, despite her best efforts, she found herself impressed by the house, the grounds, and the opulent prevalence of polished dark wood. Maybe she did envy Opal. Once she’d accepted that, the rest of his analysis lost its bite.
Why wouldn’t she want attention from someone who could offer her, if not her own kind of wealth, significantly more than where Ruby came from?
‘You might be right there, Johan. Who knows.’ She sat up and stretched, satisfied to see her reaction having the precise effect she’d intended: shock. She retrieved her T-shirt and pulled it over her head as he spluttered his way through a retort.
‘So … so you’re admitting it?’ He wore the same petulant look that Martin had earlier that evening.
Ruby shrugged. ‘I guess so.’ She pulled on her pants. ‘Anyway, goodnight.’
That last pleasantry was almost cartoonishly cheery, but Ruby walked back to her room feeling satiated, in more ways than one. Not only had she come away now ready to sleep and unburdened from want, but she had left Johan in bed with his racing thoughts. Despite her starting on the back foot that evening, she felt that whatever little game they were playing had swayed into her favour.
As she drifted between wake and sleep, though, her mind pulled her back, once again to that feeling she’d had in Cindy’s bed. A feeling more potent than calm, serenity perhaps, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever feel it again. In comparison, the smug satisfaction she felt now was a hollow imitation.
Chapter 26
It was the day of judgement: the first of three. It had come around quickly, and yet at the same time Opal could barely remember the life she’d had before the tournament. It felt distant, familiar but also foreign, the feeling of looking at a photograph of a long-lost relative who shares many of your own features.
And she had also begun to feel a nascent panic with each passing day, that when this was over, and it was just her and Martin left in this house, she might have to somehow wrangle herself back into the ill-fitting costume of Placid Country Wife. Would she have to wear that convincing mask of contentment that she’d previously managed to bear? She was not sure she could ever manage to again.
Opal opted for a long black silk tunic with a dropped waist, and fine ribbon straps that perched daintily on her broad shoulders. It was another item that Saffie had had made for her in Marrakech and brought back a few Christmases ago. It had sat at the back of the wardrobe ever since.
It occurred to Opal then that maybe her mother had been the only person for whom the mask had never been convincing. Ironic really, that Opal had spent so much time wishing to beseenby Saffie, to be really understood, when in fact she might have been better off putting that energy into seeing herself.
When she had met Saffie in the tearooms at The Dorchester, to announce her engagement and show her the fine gold band burdened with a hefty rectangular-cut emerald, her mother’s reaction had gutted her.
Saffie had at least taken the time to place the spectacles she preferred to keep hidden on the end of her nose, and peer down at her daughter’s outstretched hand. When she looked up, though, it was with a single incredulous eyebrow raised.
‘Where does one source such an ostentatious gem, I wonder,’ she’d said. No congratulations or motherly embrace. ‘You would think that an opal would be the obvious choice, not as … extravagant perhaps but understated, and undeniably beautiful …’ Opal had been angry.
‘Well no one even calls me Opal apart from you. My friends call me Pol.’ It was a retort that had been meant to wound her mother, but as ever Saffie had not given Opal what she wanted; instead she responded with nonchalant bemusement.
‘Imagine that – I put so much effort into thinking of a unique name for my only daughter and she decides she’d rather be known as Pol.’ Saffie had shaken her head as she put her glasses back into her bag.
Honestly, Opal had been harbouring doubts about the ring as well. It was a bit … garish for her taste. The emerald a slightly too cool shade of green against a band of gold that was slightly too yellow and the diamonds nestled either side were a bit much. But, she’d reasoned, it must have taken a lot for Martin to afford it. It was a promise, not only to marry her, but to provide for her in the manner, as he put it, that shemust have grown accustomed to. It was the thought that counted, Opal had told herself, and then her mother had come along and rained all over her parade.
