The Second Wife

by Rebecca Fleet

  George is starting to fidget and cast his eyes around the club again, watching out for Kas. She forces herself to speak. “Look,” she says, “I don’t think he’s around. In any case, if he is, you can catch up later. How about we go somewhere more private?”

  Here it is. She reaches out her hand and places it at the top of his thigh. The material feels scratchy and slightly damp, the muscle beneath tensing under her touch. She glances up at him, her eyebrows raised invitingly; she feels her lips peel apart in suggestion. The moment is white hot and electrically charged. She has forgotten, in this instant, who this man is; there is only the familiar rhythm of seduction, the cut and thrust of approach and response. George Hart hesitates for a moment, taking one final look around the club, and then he puts his hand on top of hers. The gesture is almost romantic, she thinks, considering the multitude of other places he could have put it. She wraps her fingers around his and pulls him from his seat.

  “Come on,” she says, “I know a place.” She guides him through the swaying crowd, her eyes fixed on the small red spotlight that signals the steps to the basement. She has never been down there before, but she has seen Kas emerging, always locking the door behind him. She knows that this time it will not be locked. Curling her fingers more tightly into the man’s palm, she glances back at him. He looks confused and eager, almost grateful, and for an instant she is pulled up short. She is not sure, not sure at all of what she is doing. But now they are at the steps, and she is pushing the door open and slipping quietly in, unobserved in the dark corner, and pulling him after her. Together, they descend the staircase, and she sees another door to her right, left a crack ajar so that dim light spills out across the floor from the room beyond.

  “Here,” she says. George’s hands are around her waist now, drawing her against him, as she backs against the door and pushes it open. He has lost his earlier finesse, his touch rough and almost aggressive. She leads him into the room: a small, stone-walled storage cavern, almost bare but for a pile of boxes stacked at one end, a corner table and a lamp. In an instant, as the door slams behind them, she sees Kas, standing silently in the corner, leaning back against the wall. Even though she has been expecting it, the sight of him makes her body jolt in shock. She gasps, and instantly George lets go of her. He swings round, and she sees him visibly stiffen and go still. He does not speak.

  Sadie looks at Kas, but his gaze is fixed on George. In another moment, she feels hands on her shoulders, guiding her away. Twisting around, she sees that it is Dominic. He is pushing her back toward the door, and at first, her mind groping for comprehension, she does not resist. In the half light of the basement, time seems to slow and stop; everything around her is motionless, and she hears the faint, muffled thud of music above, seeping through the ceiling. Her head swims. And then she is suddenly terrified. The fear makes her struggle, kicking out against Dominic, and she hears her own breathing coming hard and fast. Even as she resists, she knows that there is no point. He is stronger than her, much stronger, and she is not sure enough of what she is fighting against.

  After that everything happens very fast. She is pushed out the door, and Dominic comes with her, closing it tightly behind them. He holds her only by the wrist now, but his fingers clutch around the bone like iron. He tells her to be quiet, and somewhere in the back of her head she thinks that this is strange, because she has not spoken a word. Her legs are shaking, threatening to collapse below her. They stand there together outside the door for two minutes, maybe three. Dominic’s eyes never leave the dark summit of the staircase. She feels a powerful impulse to run, and the need is so strong that she shifts an inch or two toward the stairs. Let me go, she whispers, so quietly that she cannot be sure that Dominic has heard. He makes no reply, but his grip on her tightens. She looks at him, and sees his face calm and set, his glassy eyes fixed above them, as if she is not trembling beside him, as if she is not there at all.

  A knock comes from the other side of the door. With silent efficiency, Dominic swings round and pushes it open. Kas is there, his face oddly alert and searching. He says something that she does not catch. And then they are all inside the little room again, and for just a fraction of a second before the two men move forward to block her view, she sees it; the shape of a body underneath a rough sheet of sacking, perfectly still. For a few hectic seconds, the pieces do not fit together. Her eyes flick around the room, searching for George, back and forth, each image like the snap of a camera inside her head. There is no one moment when she understands, only a deepening fear and shock that numbs her from head to toe.

  She is shuddering; she doesn’t realize how much until Kas puts his hand on her arm. “Go back upstairs,” he says. “Stay by the door for a few minutes, and then go home.” The words are innocent enough, but every one of them pierces her like a knife. She feels Kas’s fingers under her chin, tipping up her face to meet his. “You did well, Sadie,” he says. “You will keep this to yourself.”

  She thinks that there is just the faintest quaver of a question in the last word, a tiny rise in his inflection that seems to demand an answer, but she cannot make herself nod.

  “You must understand, Sadie,” Kas says. He is very close to her now, his hands sliding down to grip her shoulders, and he speaks intently, his voice low and steady. “This is all a question of loyalty. Some people are disloyal. Those people are not worth caring about. They may be useful to make an example of, but that is all.” For a fraction of a second, his eyes roll toward the sheet of sacking, before his gaze snaps back to her. “And others . . .” he says. This time he looks deliberately toward Dominic, standing rigid at the doorway, his face expressionless. “Others are loyal. Which are you, Sadie?”

  Her head is reeling now. Everything in the room is turning fuzzy and bright, colors blurring in front of her eyes. Sweat is collecting lightly on her face. “I’m with you,” she whispers, the words dragged out from somewhere because she knows they are the right ones, because despite everything she cannot help but mean them. And after a brief pause, a look of searching satisfaction, he nods.

  She has to get out. Slowly, she backs away, and her fingers fumble for the door handle. As she does so, she thinks she hears Dominic speak to Kas, a low, worried mumble. Are you sure she . . . She hears Kas’s confident reply. And then her hand finally clasps the handle, and she propels herself out and away from the room, her legs carrying her up the staircase on autopilot in the dark. She pushes against the heavy black door, and it eases open, and she’s back in the heat and noise of the club with hundreds of people swarming around her, dancing and drunk and shouting. She stands there frozen, counting seconds in her head. When she has reached four hundred she moves away. As she pushes through the crowd, she feels the electric warmth of strangers against her skin, and realizes that she is cold. Her eyes are stinging with tears, but they never quite fall.

  Suddenly she’s out on the street alone. She begins to walk, slowly at first, then faster, feeling the frozen air sobering her. For a moment, she wonders if she has hallucinated it all. But with every step she takes she can visualize the scene more clearly, like an amnesiac starting to make sense of what she has seen, and she knows that it is real. She feels a sick surge of exhilaration that she does not understand. She begins to run, and as she does so, the brightly strung rows of blue and silver lights along the streets seem to shimmer and shake above her head, as if brimming over with ominous secret meaning.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE WEEK that follows feels double its normal length. She watches television, gets half-heartedly drunk, cancels plans with friends who she no longer feels any connection with. Early every morning she wakes up with the same nagging sense of unease, like the aftermath of an instantly forgotten dream.

  At first, when she replays those minutes in the basement in her head, they are clouded by shock. She can’t quite comprehend what has happened, but she knows it should horrify her. And y
et as the days go on, the shock slowly begins to recede, an ebbing tide sliding inexorably away from her. She begins to realize that nothing has changed. George Hart was a stranger to her. His existence on the planet had no impact on her. She has been close to death, been party to it even, and the world is still turning and her own life goes on. It hardens something in her: a tight little kernel of cynical knowledge that she’ll never be able to pull out.

  Late every night Kas texts her the same three words. Speak to me. She has learned that it doesn’t matter what she replies. He never sends a second text. It seems that he simply wants to know that she is there. All the same, she replies to every one, and every night he stalks through her dreams.

  On the fourth day, Rachel comes to her and sits down on the bed, dressed smartly in her work clothes but with darkish rings staining the skin beneath her eyes, and begins to talk about an opportunity that has opened up at her company. Just an internship, with minimal pay, but it could lead somewhere. She thinks Sadie should come in and meet her manager. She thinks it could be good for her. She lets her know without quite spelling it out, that she has pulled some strings to arrange this meeting. And Sadie can’t think of a good enough reason to say no.

  And so it is that on the sixth day she’s sitting in a glass-and-marble reception area, listening to the sound of high heels clicking and echoing across the floor, watching the workers buzz back and forth talking to one another in a language that might as well be foreign. She is dressed uncomfortably in one of Rachel’s suits; they’re the same size on paper, but the curves of her breasts and hips make a provocative hourglass of the clothes that hang fashionably off Rachel’s slim frame. Her hair is pulled tightly back from her temples, making her head ache.

  Rachel is hovering next to her, glancing at her anxiously every so often. “Here he comes,” she hisses, gesturing toward a plump middle-aged man in clothes designed for someone fifteen years younger who is lumbering in their direction. “Good luck, hope it goes well.” One final glance, and then she’s hurrying off. Sadie sees in that glance—its mixture of warning and pleading—that her sister knows damn well that she’s going to fuck this up. She thinks about walking away, but the man is already extending a hand and clasping her own in it, making his introductions and leading her away to a small windowless meeting room that takes her back to the basement she was standing in last Saturday night. She sees herself walking down those narrow steps with their glowing red spotlight, feels the cold stone wall of the cavern against her back.

  “Maybe you could start by telling me something about yourself, and why you’d like to work at Kempton Price,” the man is saying, but Sadie barely hears him. She’s thinking of Kas, leaning silently back against the wall, his eyes on George Hart and filled with that cool strong sense of purpose; the tense muscles of his arms swelling beneath his white T-shirt.

  The man is waiting, pressing the tips of his fat fingers together expectantly. “Do you have any experience in this kind of company?” he tries when nothing comes. Behind his black-rimmed glasses, his eyes flick over her; the swift reflexive action that she’s used to, although at least he has the decency to blush when he sees her noticing it. The apples of his cheeks stain briefly pink, as if he’s been slapped.

  Sadie clears her throat, groping for the answers that Rachel has coached her in. “Nope,” she says simply at last. “I work in a bar, which I’m guessing is pretty different from this place.”

  The man blinks, clearly perplexed. “Well, it is . . . pretty different, yes.” He hesitates, frowning as if he’s trying to work out what on earth it is he’s looking at, and how she can possibly be related to the smiling, dutiful girl who does his accounts with such acumen and precision. “Do you—”

  “I mean, I suppose there’s some overlap,” Sadie interrupts, and all at once she’s starting to enjoy herself, relishing the chance to step outside of her head for a few brief moments. “At the bar my job is basically to take people’s money, which is kind of like what you do, right? And I have to be nice to a load of wankers—I’m sure you know what that’s like. And of course everyone’s pissed all the time, which I’ve heard isn’t so unusual in your line of work either. So all in all—”

  The man gets to his feet, gathering his papers together with a snap. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” he says ironically, and Sadie sees with a flash of clarity that he’s probably not so bad—that he’s got a decent sense of humor and he’s probably a good boss and maybe she’d be lucky to work here after all—but the possibility has already slipped through her fingers with those few badly chosen words and now it’ll never come back.

  “Wait,” she begins, but he’s already ambling out of the room, raising a hand in a farewell salute, dismissing her from his life.

  She follows and walks slowly back through reception, glancing at the clock as she does so. She’s been in the interview room for precisely a minute and a half. A record, even for her. As she crosses the gleaming marble floor, she sees Rachel, hovering behind one of the glass doors at the far end of the corridor, peering anxiously and uncomprehendingly through at her. She halts for an instant, spreads her hands out palms up: Hey, I did my best. But already Rachel is pushing open the door and marching toward her, arms folded, her lips compressed into a tight, angry line.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she snaps when she reaches her. “You were in there about five seconds. What happened?”

  Sadie shrugs. “Guess it wasn’t the right fit.” She knows that her tone is too offhand; she should be sounding more regretful, conscious of the missed opportunity, but it’s too late now and so she shifts her demeanor in the opposite direction, the slight tilt of her chin spelling out boredom and defiance.

  Rachel stands looking at her silently for a moment, a frown splitting her forehead, as if she’s trying to make sense of what she’s being told. “Nothing ever is,” she says at last. “I don’t know what you want.”

  “I don’t fucking know either,” Sadie bites back in response. Her voice is louder now and she sees Rachel glance around furtively, not wanting this to turn into a scene. She thinks about upping the ante, giving her sister what she so clearly expects and screaming in her face, but she doesn’t have the energy. “But it’s not this,” she contents herself with. “I’m not like you, Rachel.”

  Rachel regards her again, a long evaluative sweep from head to toe. “No,” she says flatly. “You can say that again.”

  The air between them hangs taut for a moment. At any time, Sadie thinks, one of them might say something unforgivable, something from which they’ll never come back. She doesn’t think it’s going to be her, not this time. She can’t quite muster up the will to feel anything much. The disappointment in her sister’s eyes is numbing her, just another layer of chilly insulation around her heart. She shrugs again and turns around, walking away.

  As she walks down the street away from the office, already the regret she felt in the interview room is dissolving. She knows she couldn’t have done it. Couldn’t have gotten up to be at her desk by nine each morning and sit there for eight hours with her fingers flying efficiently over the keyboard or sitting in team meetings making chirpy, incisive comments, even though she’s bright enough. It doesn’t matter. She’s not even twenty and already she’s rotten inside. Whatever it is that makes people human has been scooped out of her. When she glances down at her pale hands she’s struck by the fragility of her skin, the improbability of this smooth beautiful casing housing all this darkness.

  Something inside her lurches. She’s close to the edge, and she snatches gratefully at her phone when it buzzes, her breath catching in her throat when she sees Kas’s name on the screen. It’s much earlier than he normally texts, and as she opens the message she registers that it’s different, and that it’s all beginning again. Tomorrow night at the club, he has written. Be there. Delete this.

  * * *

  • • •

 
WHEN SHE LOOKS BACK on that Saturday night, her memory is strange and cinematic, presenting only the edited highlights. Dressing in her bedroom at home, pulling on a short, red dress and clasping a diamante choker around her neck. It is four days before Christmas, and the radio is piping out carols in the background, sweet choirboy voices raised in harmony.

  The next thing she remembers, she is standing at the bar in the club, and Kas is there, pulling a photograph out of his pocket. Felix Santos, he says, and shows her a picture of a short, dark man with black hair oiled to his scalp, laughing and pointing at a television screen, footballers frozen in action, across a crowded pub. Got it? She tells him yes. She feels no sense of surprise; she has known from the moment she received his message that this is how things will go. Then the slow patrol around the club, seeking out the man in the photograph with the dark shining eyes. There is nothing in her head when she sees him, nothing but automatic recognition and the message it sends to her legs to move forward toward him.

  It is even easier than the last time. In minutes she is leading him across the dance floor, down the dark staircase to the tiny basement room. This time the man does not freeze when he sees Kas. He swears loudly, and flies for the door, but Dominic is there. It is two against one, and the man is drunk and clumsy. There is no time for her to leave the room. She does not watch, but she hears the sickening crunch of bone and the last gasp of breath leaving body. She is staring at the back wall, watching the shadows slide along the stone.

  They leave her there in the room and tell her to wait, taking the bundle of sacking with them. It is only Kas who returns. He reaches her in two long strides, peers into her face and asks her if she is all right. She looks into his eyes, and doesn’t know what to reply. For the first time, she acknowledges that she is afraid of him. The realization tugs at her painfully, as if her own flesh and blood has revealed itself to be evil. And yet there is something else there still, impossible to strip away, the heady swim of lust that clouds her mind whenever he is there.