Читать книгу The Disappearance - Annabel Kantaria - Страница 16

On the back seat of his Daimler, Ralph Templeton puts his arm around Audrey and pulls her close to him. She breathes in the now-familiar scent of his cologne and rests her head against his chest. He strokes her hair almost absently, letting it twine itself around his fingers, and Audrey sighs, her mind full of images of this man – this stranger – who’s shot into her life like a bolt of lightning. Was their first date really just three weeks ago?

Audrey feels her cheeks flush as she remembers the way Ralph had devoured her with his eyes over dinner that evening; the way his gaze had made her feel so gauche despite the expensive dress she’d picked. Maybe she is a little younger, less sophisticated, than the women Ralph’s used to, but he seems charmed by that. She bites her lip: thinking back, she can’t believe she’d actually given him a real phone number in the café instead of transposing a couple of digits like she usually did when men pushed for her number; she can’t believe she’d agreed to go out to dinner that night he’d turned up at her office. How life turns in an instant, she thinks.

After their first date, Ralph had bundled her onto the back seat of his Daimler and nuzzled her face until his lips found hers, then he’d kissed her all the way back to her tiny studio flat. Despite his protests, she’d refused to let him in. It’d been the right strategy, Audrey reflects now, because he hasn’t been able to get enough of her since, pursuing her with a fervour that almost verges on the indecent.

In the car now, Ralph’s hand moves from Audrey’s hair to her cheek. Applying a little pressure, he turns her face to his, stares into her eyes as if he’s searching her soul, then places his lips gently on hers, the softest of kisses that melts her. When he finally pulls away, she’s breathless.

‘Come home with me tonight, Red,’ he says.

Audrey notices, all of a sudden, that the car’s not on the usual route to her flat and a ripple of fear runs through her. She’s in the back of a car with a man she’s known less than four weeks, in a part of Bombay with which she’s unfamiliar. No one in the world bar Ralph Templeton and his chauffeur knows where she is.

‘Where are we?’ she asks, sitting up straight in her seat and trying to get her bearings.

Ralph takes her hand. ‘On the way to Juhu. I asked the driver to … please, Red. Come home with me.’

Audrey buys time by fiddling in her handbag. Does she have reason to be afraid?

‘Look at me,’ Ralph commands. He takes her chin into his hand, turns her face to his and stares into her eyes. Audrey holds his gaze, mesmerised by the apparent depth of her suitor’s feeling. ‘Nothing will happen, not if you don’t want it to,’ Ralph says. ‘This is not about sex. But please come home with me. I just want to have you there with me. To hold you.’ His voice breaks. ‘Red, I need you.’

He lets go of her face and turns away, his hand brushing at his eye and the very core of Audrey melts. There’s something about this man that makes her feel she’d run to the end of the earth if he asked her to. She leans across and places her lips on Ralph’s ear.

‘Okay,’ she whispers.