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suite, in time for the start of the cricket. When
he switched on the big flat-screen TV, his wife’s face filled the
screen. She was informing them that rain had delayed the start of
the third and final cricket test-match between India and South
Africa.
    Hudson picked up a bottle of Jameson’s Irish
whisky and filled a glass half-full. He cast a glance at his escort
and she shook her head. He sat down on the couch next to her. He
stroked her with his right hand as he raised the glass with his
left to take a sip of the deliciously smooth Jameson. He smiled
wryly and nodded at the TV. ‘You know I’m married to her?’
    Had Hudson known that it is imperative for
any self-respecting top-class escort to know everything about the
cream of top society, he wouldn’t have asked the question. But he
didn’t, so he did. And she nodded her head and replied, ‘She’s
beautiful.’
    He checked her eyes and saw that she was
being honest. ‘And heartless,’ he said.
    ‘If I was a man and had a wife like that I’d
be happy.’
    ‘But you aren’t a man,’ said Hudson, taking a
measured sip of his drink. ‘So you don’t understand that men have
needs that beauty alone cannot satisfy.’
    ‘I do. And I’ll tell you for free that’s why
every society needs women like me. I understand that not all women
can be expected to do what I do. Sex is an art, which is why every
society needs women like me. You keep your sleeping beauty at home,
and come to us to give you what you lack at home, and thus the
order of things is maintained – as it’s always been throughout the
centuries. And we all live happily ever after,’ she added with an
amused smile.
    He squeezed her knee. ‘Don’t be smug. Don’t
you know that my dad died at the hands of one of your kind?’
    ‘He was old, and his heart was weak. You are
not.’
    It was a refreshing thought, and Hudson was
glad to have her with him, because she saw things differently from
the rest of the world. Absent-mindedly, he stroked her hair with
his right hand. ‘I’ve wanted to have kids ever since we’ve been
married,’ he said, talking to the face of Joelyn on the TV screen.
‘But she doesn’t want to. Says she’s too focused on her career to
be a mother. I have actually had visions of me playing with my
daughter…I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted to have my own
little girl, made from my own sperm.’
    ‘How old’s she?’
    Hudson turned to face her with a blank
expression.
    ‘Your wife,’ she explained.
    ‘Twenty-six,’ he muttered without
enthusiasm.
    ‘Give her time,’ said his female companion.
‘Someday she’ll realize that family’s important.’
    Hudson wanted to respond, but at that precise
moment pictures of the studio with Joelyn and two male cricket
analysts disappeared and pictures of the Newlands cricket stadium
came on TV. It had stopped raining and the match was about to
begin. As Graeme Smith and Alviro Petersen, South Africa’s opening
batsmen, stepped out onto the crease to bat, Hudson rued not having
heeded his father’s advice to sign a prenuptial agreement with
Joelyn Smit.
     
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    Jansen Vermuelen had devoted herself to the
sport of tennis from the age of twelve. After finishing high
school, instead of going to college she had decided to turn
professional. And at nineteen se had won the US Open. Jansen was an
attractive blue-eyed blonde. How an extraordinarily ugly man like
Joe Vermuelen could produce such a remarkable specimen of beauty
was beyond reason. Many of his family members believed that his
last wife, with whom he was assumed to have created Jansen, had
cheated on him with a secret lover. Jansen was the apple of her
father’s eye. He had built for her an indoor clay tennis court and
upgraded the one outside to ITF standards at the Sandhurst family
home. This was where Jansen had trained for most of her life. When
she was fourteen, her father had hired a live-in trainer for his
beloved daughter. The