(1998) Denial by Peter James Page A

even more. Katy had loathed beer.
    I’m comparing them
.
    There was an earthiness he really liked about Amanda. She was elegant, pretty, yet he could sense a wild streak in her, and, not for the first time tonight, he found himself wondering what it would be like to make love to her.
    He was getting a hard-on standing here at the bar. He wished he had the courage to put his arm around her, but right now he was so nervous she might think he was being forward that he kept moving away every time their bodies touched.
    He wanted so much to give her a signal, to touch her hand, or just stroke back the cluster of blonde hair that had tumbled down over her forehead. Her face and arms and legs were lightly tanned. A few freckles nestled in the soft-looking golden down on her arms and he found the colour of those hairs deeply sensual.
    You are gorgeous, you are seriously, seriously, gorgeous. I love the way you look, I love where you live. I want to know you better. I am smitten, I really am!
    ‘I can draw you a habituation curve,’ he said.
    ‘A what?’
    ‘It’s a graph. We measure
anxiety
and
time
. The first time I introduce her to the glass jar, we’ll see the highest curve, the second time, it will be less, and so on.’
    God I’m hopeless
, he thought, suddenly.
The great seducer. Talking to my date about dog turds in jam jars
.
    Later, as they left the theatre, Michael told her he had booked a table at the Ivy, in Covent Garden.
    ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘That is one of my
favourite
restaurants. How did you know? Are you psychic?’ It was a coincidence, also, she thought. The Ivy was the sister restaurant to the Caprice where Brian took her. The Ivy was more low-key, less brash. And Michael was far more low key and less brash than Brian.
    ‘I’m a shrink,’ he said, deadpan. ‘I know everything.’
    She grinned, threw a glance straight into his eyes, and said nothing. Michael was fleetingly distracted by a drop-headFerrari revving noisily and beautifully in the jam of cars.
    Neither of them noticed the white van parked directly across the street from the restaurant’s main entrance.

Chapter Nineteen
    The elegantly dressed old lady did not notice the white van either.
    The taxi pulled up outside her handsome white Regency mansion block facing the Hove seafront promenade, swinging into a gap almost directly in front of the van. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.
    With blue cotton-gloved fingers, she handed a five-pound note to the taxi driver and smiled sweetly, but with some difficulty, through skin that was drum-tight from her fifth face-lift. ‘Keep the change.’
    ‘Ten pence, thanks darling.’
    Still smiling sweetly, a Hannington’s department store carrier bag suspended from her arm, she walked in small, carefully articulated steps, but with fine deportment, her head held proudly high, a silk scarf fluttering in the sea breeze from her broad-brimmed hat, towards the entrance portico.
    There was a sharp
ping
as the ten-pence coin hit the pavement right beside her. ‘Have it back, you old bat! You obviously need it more than I do!’
    She turned towards the taxi, raised a hand in the air and gave him two fingers. Just in case he hadn’t got the signal clearly enough, she jigged her arm up and down to emphasise it.
    Horrible, ignorant man. Didn’t he know who she was? Did he live down a hole in the ground or what? Hadn’t he watched television last night? Read today’s newspapers? The BAFTA awards!
    She had been given a
Lifetime Achievement Award
! Last night!
    And this little cretin hansom cab driver hadn’t recognised her. And he expected a tip! It was bad enough having newsagents run by foreigners, but now to have to put up with cab drivers who didn’t recognise you, and who didn’t have the manners to offer to carry your shopping at least to the front door!
    She let herself into the building, took the painfully slow, rattly lift up to the third floor and walked down the corridor to her