Lana looks blankly at Blake.
‘Try the potato soufflé,’ he says. ‘You might like it.’
‘OK, potato soufflé,’ she agrees. When the waiter is gone, she takes a sip of wine. It must have been good, but she is so nervous she registers it only as a cold liquid. ‘So,’
she says. ‘You are a banker.’
‘And you have been on Google.’
‘Wikipedia actually. I was curious. All my life I imagined bankers were thieves utilizing fractional reserve banking to create money out of nothing, and then they take your house and car and business when you can’t keep up the repayments.’
‘Ah, this is like all bankers are thieves, all lawyers are liars, and all women are whores.’
‘I’d rather be a whore than a banker.’
‘That’s handy then. I’d rather be a banker who buys a whore.’
‘Why do you need to buy a woman, anyway? With that flashy car of yours, they must be leaving their phone number by the droves on your windscreen wipers.’
‘You were an impulse buy.’ His eyes crinkle at the corners. She amuses him.
She looks at his perfectly cut suit, his beautifully manicured hands, and the Swiss precision watch glinting on his wrist. ‘There is nothing impulsive about you.’ Her eyes take in that delectable lock of hair that falls over his forehead. ‘Other than your hair.’
He laughs out loud. She looks at him. The man had lovely teeth. ‘This might turn out to be a lot more interesting than I thought,’ he says.
The mussels arrive in tiny, covered black pots. When Blake opens his she follows suit. The smell is maddeningly good, but she waits until Blake reaches for his utensils before she copies him.
‘Bon appétit,’ he says.
‘Bon appétit,’ she repeats.
The mussels are meltingly soft in her mouth.
‘Good?’ asks Blake.
‘Very.’
But the portion is so small it is quickly gone. ‘I don’t understand something,’ Lana says, daintily dabbing the corners of her mouth. ‘How come the paparazzi never follow you around like they do other celebrities and eligible bachelors, and expose all your escapades and wrongdoings?’
‘For the same reason my family and the other great families are not on the Forbes richest list. We don’t like publicity. Unless it is sanctified by us you won’t see it in the papers.’
‘Are you trying to tell me your family has that much power?’
‘I’m not trying to, I’m telling you. It’s easy when you control the media.’
‘Your family controls the media?’
‘The great, old families do. It is in our interest to work as a group.’ His eyes glitter in the soft light. Suddenly his lips twitch. He leans back and flashes a smile. ‘But enough about me. Tell me about yourself.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Other than the fact that you live on a council estate and don’t earn enough, I know nothing at all about you.’
‘That’s not strictly true. You know I am AIDS free, don’t have any sexually transmitted diseases, own a clean bill of health, am on contraceptives as of today, and have had a full body wax.’
His smile becomes a grin. ‘How was the waxing session? Not too painful, I hope.’
‘Not at all. You should try it sometime.’
He laughs outright. ‘The day you pay me to have sex with you, I will.’
She cannot bring herself to smile back.
The lamb arrives. She looks at her plate. Blood has eddied under the meat. She cannot eat that. She sighs inwardly. It will be vegetables and potato again.
‘Where do you get your unusual coloring from?’
‘My grandmother on my mother’s side was Iranian.
The hair is from her and the eyes are from my father’s side of the family.’
He let his eyes wander around her face. A Middle Eastern influence. It had fleshed out her face and given her the generous mouth.
‘Have you been to Iran before?’
‘I went once as a child, but it is my dream to take my mother back to Iran.’
‘It’s dangerous there now.’
‘For you maybe, but not for me or Mum it isn’t.’
‘Still don’t you think you should wait until all this talk of war is over?’
‘There will be war. It is better to go now, before Iran becomes another Iraq or Libya.’
‘What was it like when you were there?’
‘When I went it was a wonderful place. We stayed in the desert. It was very beautiful. At night there was pure silence. And the sand dunes sing.’
‘You can go to Saudi Arabia for sand dunes. Do you need to go to a country that is preparing for war?’