Page 17 of The Pearl (The Godwicks 3)

Who was that for—you or Charlie?

That was the question, wasn’t it?

That was the hundred-thousand pound question.

3

The Psyche Mirror

Thursday. Three days later. Arthur lay in his bedroom on the big oak bed at his parents’ Piccadilly townhouse. His oldchildhood bedroom unchanged since his school days at Harrow. An enormous Union Jack hung on the opposite wall. Over his bed hung posters for a Blur concert his sister had dragged him to, and another poster for the Arctic Monkeys when he’d returned the favor. Polo gear, unused for years, lay piled in the closet along with his rugby kit and all the other flotsam and jetsam of his teenage years, long abandoned, long forgotten. He only noted it now because it felt so incongruous to be lying there, surrounded by artifacts of his childhood while dreaming about the thirty-year-old widow he was suddenly sleeping with…

Arthur had never wanted to be a child. Even as young as nine or ten, if given the chance, he would have happily skipped right over childhood and all its embarrassments and indignities to become an adult immediately. An old soul, his parents called him. From age ten on, he’d treated Charlie like more of a son than a baby brother. Arthur aped his parents, doing everything they did since they were his models for adulthood—attending art shows and the symphony, playing polo like his father, going to auctions with his mother, lectures, board meetings… He’d avoided dating until he was eighteen because girls his age seemed far too young for him. Why should he date a teenage girl when he was trying so hard to be a man? He’d only fallen for Wendy because she’d seemed much older, having gone to schools all over the world. And Naledi had been five years older than him. They’d only had a few months together before she returned to Botswana, but those few months had convinced him he’d never be happy with someone his own age.

He’d even skipped university because he couldn’t stand to extend his childhood—or at least to put off adulthood—another day longer. He’d chosen Sandhurst, the military academy, because he thought it would make him—finally—feel like a man. Except that hadn’t worked either.

Then…Regan. He’d still felt he was playing the part of an adult until that night with her, and then, strangely, the very next morning, he’d woken up and felt like a man for the first time in his life.

Was it because she’d been married and widowed and seemed so impossibly mature to him? And if someone so impossibly mature had chosen him, then he must have been old enough and mature enough for her. Or was it because of the nature of the sex they’d had? That she’d chosen him to explore her fantasies?

He couldn’t say, only that every time he thought about her, about theeventsof Monday night, he felt that something monumental had happened to him. A seismic shift. A memory stirred—something his father had tried to tell him and Charlie a few years ago, that they would not know what sort of men they were until they had an intimate partner in their lives. What was it he’d said? Something about being married, how it changes a man…

Arthur almost had it when the doorbell rang, and he sat up like he’d heard a gunshot.

When he opened the front door, he found the girl was there again, the blonde in the red raincoat and Wellington boots. She held out another notecard to him. The girl remained on the porch, glowering.

“So, who are you?” Arthur asked, taking the card. “Do you have a name?”

“Zoot,” she said, like she was doing him a favor by telling him.

“Zoot? As in…‘Zoot’? Could you spell that, please?”

“ZedplusOot. Zoot.”

“And why are you called Zoot?”

“I like spankings and oral sex.”

He blinked. Then he got it. “Ah. A Monty Python reference.”

“Never goes amiss,” Zoot said.

“All right,Zoot, you can call me Arthur, if you’d like. Or Art. No pressure.”

“Notmy lord?Notsir?”

“Arthur’s fine. Really,” he said. He should make friends with this girl, he thought. Maybe he could get some dirt on Regan. “What do you do when you’re not delivering messages and glaring at me? Are you Lady Ferry’s dogsbody or something?”

“Second in command,” she said, her East End accent on full display. “So mind your Ps and Qs.”

“My Ps and Qs are in the best shape of their lives.” He held the card, unopened. She was watching him. “Are you waiting for me to tip you?”

She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “The boss was right. You are a brat. Makes sense. Brat’s just Art with a B, innit?”

“That’s Bart.”

“Close enough.”

She turned and stomped off, red boots echoing on the pavement. So much for making a new friend.

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