Helga's Web by Jon Cleary

halfway between her charity bridge parties and her cocktail parties, changing from one expensive dress to another, watching her social diary as carefully as she watched her diet chart. He groaned inwardly: when he left here he was due to meet Norma at a cocktail party. He took his mind off her and went back to looking at Helga.
    “And you’re not servile?”
    “No, liebling” She got up, moved across to her dressing-table and took a chocolate from the box there. She bit into it, smiling suggestively at him as she did so. God, he thought, why can’t Norma be like this? “Walter darling, I’m broke.”
    At once he was wary, a reflex action, the politician coming out of him even in bed. “Broke? You mean you’re a trifle short?”
    “More than that.” She picked up the box of chocolates, came back and sat down on the side of the bed again. She chose another chocolate and bit into it, this time without any suggestiveness. “I’ve decided to go into business, open a boutique. But I’ll need capital.”
    “How much?” Still wary, he looked at her over the top of his glass.
    She pushed the expensive-looking box towards him, but he shook his head. She picked out another chocolate and said, “About twenty thousand dollars.”
    He shook his head; even Norma had never asked him for that much. “Try someone else, Helga.” He nodded at the box of chocolates. “Try the chap who buys those for you.”
    She gave him a mildly reproachful look. “You sound like a schoolboy. How do you know I don’t buy them myself?”
    “Every time I come here, there’s a new box. For a girl who’s always complaining about being broke—”
    “I do not complain, darling.”
    “No,” he admitted reluctantly. “No, indeed you don’t. Not like—” He buried the comparison in his glass.
    “Not like your wife? Are you afraid that if you give me twenty thousand dollars, she will complain?”
    “I’d make damned sure she didn’t know.”
    “But I might tell her, darling. About us.” She picked over the chocolates carefully till she found a soft center. “Of
    course I shouldn’t do that if you gave me the money. I might even pay you interest, just so it would look legal and businesslike/’
    “How much?”
    She shrugged. “Half per cent?”
    He laughed, the glass on his chest jumping and spilling some of his drink. “You think my accountant would consider that businesslike? Forget it, Helga. I don’t have twenty thousand dollars to hand out like that.”
    “You do, darling. I’ve been watching the shares of all your companies. For instance, New Sydney Development has risen thirty per cent in the last three months. You own two hundred thousand preferential shares in it.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I bought some shares, darling, not many, then asked for a copy of the original prospectus. It was all there in black and white.”
    He looked at her admiringly, even though he was now beginning to feel something approaching dislike of her. “And I used to think you were a girl who only knew about one thing.” He gestured at the bed. “What sort of business were you in when you got those tattoos on your behind?”
    She stood up, holding the box of chocolates carefully in front of her. She looked at him steadily, then hit him in the face with the box, scattering chocolates all over the bed, spilling his drink and making him yelp with pain as the corner of the box split his eyebrow. Cursing her, he fell out of bed, blood pouring from his cut eyebrow, his body marked with dark splotches where he had rolled on the chocolates. He caught a glimpse of himself in the dressing-table mirror; he looked ridiculous and the image only added to his anger. He swiped at her, but she moved quickly backwards and he stumbled past her and into the bathroom.
    When he came back into the bedroom ten minutes later she was sitting in a chair by the window doing her nails. She
    wore the green silk dressing gown he had given her for her birthday and