by Ruth Jacobs
Soul Destruction: Unforgivable
Ruth Jacobs
Table of Contents
Title Page
Soul Destruction: Unforgivable
1. The Dead John
2. An Alternative Reality
3. The Stranger, the Coke Can and the Futuristic Street Installation
4. Damaged Goods
5. The Party
6. More Than One Kind of Dead
7. That Palaver with the Blindfold
8. Surviving Life
9. Keeping Secrets
10. Seething with Loathing
11. Art, Lying and Riding
12. Pain That Feeds On the Soul
13. Not the Order Life Should Take
14. Asking For Help
15. Paying For It
16. A Game of Waiting
17. Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
18. Covering Up
19. Take Me to Your Dealer
20. Stolen Goods
21. Sick Leave
22. Shutting Down
23. The Message
24. The Revelation
25. Estate Agency Business
26. The Meet
27. Moving On
28. The Boxer and the Quidnunc
29. Unhappy Birthday
30. Little Policemen
31. Never-Ending Benders
32. Impossible Proposal
33. The Missed Turning
34. In the Twilight
35. Not Again
36. Darkness
37. A New Day
38. The Search
39. Dressing Up
40. The Gun
41. Going in Circles
42. Keep Quiet
43. Coming Clean
44. Altering Reality
45. Meanwhile Gardens
46. Smackhead Kitchen Klepto
47. Getting the Sack
48. Audacity
49. A Not So Different Generation
50. An Explanation
51. Never Too Late To Learn
52. Pilgrim’s Lane
53. The Ripple Effect
54. The Uninvited Guest
Further Reading: Life
Also By Ruth Jacobs
About the Author
About the Publisher
Fiction aimed at the heart
and the head...
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2013
Copyright © Ruth Jacobs 2013
Ruth Jacobs has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.
CONDITIONS OF SALE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing.
www.caffeine-nights.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-907565-36-6
Cover design by
Mark (Wills) Williams
Everything else by
Default, Luck and Accident
Acknowledgements
I am eternally grateful for, and would like to thank, my brave and generous friends from the 1990s who, being call girls at the time, participated in my research into prostitution. To the many exited women and to the women currently in the sex trade I am in contact with and for whom I have much respect and admiration, I am sending you love. Yet we know this story is fiction, we also know how very real this is with many women in the life having suffered multiple rapes.
I owe so much to my Grandma Clara and my dear friend, Q, who are no longer alive, but who have played a large part in my writing this novel. To my wonderful sons, thank you for believing in me - sending you hugs. Thank you to my mother who was my very first reader, my father, and to my sister, Chloe, who told me I was writing a bestseller. For her never-ending care and encouragement, love and thanks to my mother-in-law (without a marriage), Elizabeth Sees. Thank you to my favourite Uncle David for never judging me and always loving me for who I am, and thank you to his fiancée, Bobie. Although no longer alive, I must thank my favourite Great Auntie Raie for her unconditional love, and my Grandpa Abe, and my Grandma Raie and my Grandpa Archie.
Massive thanks to Sharon Murphy who saved my life in my mid-twenties, and also to the many other special people who have pulled me from the wreckage in which I have found myself way too often. Thank you to Simon Birke for restoring me to sanity whenever I have lost it over the recent years. Huge thanks to Claire Meadows, Jane Frankland and Emma Roberts for their help, inspiration and support. Thank you to Estelle Longcroft, Natasha Sandy, Deborah Malyon, Jamie Easterman, Jayne Rogers, Laura Schulman and Avril Harker for their proofreading and encouragement. Thank you to Tabitha Rosen for always having my back and to Melanie Murphy-Fowle for always being there whenever I’ve needed her. To my friend, Katie Bridgit O'Brien, thank you for my very first radio interview on your show. Brian Parsons, thank you so much for allowing me to use your beautiful and powerful song, Just Us and Justice, for my trailer, and for making it for me too. Although I haven’t known her long, I must thank Missy, who is an angel I hope stays in my life - from the US, she’s managed to be an amazing support to me. Thank you to Pete Sortwell and Kat O’Dea - you both know how you’ve played a part in this. And thank you to Clayton Dean for your excellent timing. For inside information, thank you to Richard Godly, and for her anecdotes, thanks to Jane Sibley. And a huge thank you to all my other friends, both new and old, who have helped and supported me so generously in numerous ways.
Thank you so much to Darren Laws at Caffeine Nights who believed in me and my debut novel, and special thanks to Sandra Mangan for editing, and Mark (Will) Williams for designing the cover.
For taking the time to help an aspiring novelist with research, thank you to Paula McColgan from The Lanesborough; James Kerman from Winkworth’s, Ladbroke Grove; Lesley Atkinson from Holborn Library; The Magdala, Hampstead; Sandling Fireworks, Gloucestershire; UCAS; Metropolitan Police; Hertfordshire Police.
Soul Destruction: Unforgivable is dedicated to Q, the most beautiful soul and so impossible to forget. May she rest in peace, reunited with her babies in heaven.
Soul Destruction: Unforgivable
1. The Dead John
2. An Alternative Reality
3. The Stranger, the Coke Can and the Futuristic Street Installation
4. Damaged Goods
5. The Party
6. More Than One Kind of Dead
7. That Palaver with the Blindfold
8. Surviving Life
9. Keeping Secrets
10. Seething with Loathing
11. Art, Lying and Riding
12. Pain That Feeds On the Soul
13. Not the Order Life Should Take
14. Asking For Help
15. Paying For It
16. A Game of Waiting
17. Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
18. Covering Up
19. Take Me to Your Dealer
20. Stolen Goods
21. Sick Leave
22. Shutting Down
24. The Revelation
25. Estate Agency Business
26. The Meet
27. Moving On
28. The Boxer and the Quidnunc
29. Unhappy Birthday
30. Little Policemen
31. Never-Ending Benders
32. Impossible Proposal
33. The Missed Turning
34. In the Twilight
35. Not Again
36. Darkness
37. A New Day
38. The Search
39. Dressing Up
40. The Gun
41. Going in Circles
42. Keep Quiet
43. Coming Clean
44. Altering Reality
45. Meanwhile Gardens
46. Smackhead Kitchen Klepto
47. Getting the Sack
48. Audacity
49. A Not So Different Generation
50. An Explanation
51. Never Too Late To Learn
52. Pilgrim’s Lane
53. The Ripple Effect
54. The Uninvited Guest
1. The Dead John
“There’s only one kind of dead, the not moving and the not breathing kind, and that’s the kind of dead he is.” Despite her hysteria, Shelley Hansard tried to whisper on the phone from The Lanesborough.
“Not necessarily.” Marianne’s voice squeaked down the line. “Just because things seem a certain way, it doesn’t mean they are.”
“Sometimes it does. Sometimes things are exactly as they seem – and right now, this is one of those fucking times.” Shelley sat rocking on the edge of the bed in the Regency-styled suite. “I’m telling you, he fucking died on me.”
“You’re not a doctor. You can’t go around pronouncing people dead.”
“If you don’t believe me, get off the line and I’ll call someone else.”
“Don’t you dare. You don’t tell anyone. Do you understand? You come straight here.” Marianne grunted. “Have you got the money?”
“What the fuck does that matter now?” A hot tear landed on Shelley’s thigh.
“Get a grip, Kiki. Start acting like a professional.”
Fighting the urge to look at the motionless body spread-eagled next to her, Shelley pushed herself up from the bed. Her neatly folded suit lay by her feet. She stood, staring down, burrowing her toes into the plush carpet. She knew she should get dressed, but clean clothes didn’t belong on skin that felt unclean.
Taking a step towards the bathroom, she felt unbalanced. Her legs shuddered and her backside hit the floor. Reunited with her brown, pinstripe suit, she reached for her skirt. With trembling hands, she dragged it towards her. Shuffling on her back, she shimmied into it. Her fingers grappled with the hook and eye. Making a hasty exit was important, but making an exception to her rule was impossible. She couldn’t do it.
She managed to stand but, stepping out of her skirt, she collapsed again. Pressing down on the carpet with her palms, she tried to lever herself back up. Her jolting arms gave way. The last limbs to surrender to the convulsionary rhythm that had overtaken the rest of her.
She didn’t have control over her body. Instead, she had a helpless feeling of being completely powerless. The rush to leave the hotel and the corpse was over. As a periodic convulsionist, she knew the beat could monopolise her for hours. She just had to wait. She knew what to expect. Soon she’d be gone.
***
On regaining consciousness, her shaking had reduced. She staggered to the walnut bureau where earlier she’d left her handbag, took out her mobile and checked the time: nearly midnight. Two hours lost to another world.
Slipping the mobile back inside her cream handbag, she shut her eyes, realising what she’d done. She’d called Marianne from the phone in the hotel suite. Under the circumstances, that wasn’t the phone she should have used.
After a shower, with hair wet, she dripped a track back to the bed. She dressed, trying not to look to her right but as she buttoned her jacket, she couldn’t help it. She breathed in deeply, as if inhalation through her nose would draw the tears back through her ducts from whence they’d sprung.
Quietly, she said aloud, “God bless you.”
What was his name? She tried to remember. She couldn’t. She didn’t know him, not in a real sense, only biblically. The last few hours they’d spent fornicating, high on a combination of crack and GHB. In the midst of proceedings, he’d complained of a chest pain. So, when he asked her to make him another pipe, she refused. On gently reminding her who was paying for the evening, and whose desires were to be met, he took the crack pipe from her hands and on the ash-covered foil, prepared himself a rock. The rock that would emerge to be the last ever smoked by the late, greying-blond john.
“Come to me, you...you...you nymph,” he said, beckoning to her as he exhaled his final pipe. “Come over here and pleasure me— my penis. I mean, pleasure my penis. Would you, with your mouth, please?” The client reclined on the bed, unaware that his last words had just been spent on a bungled request for fellation. And from a young woman whose name he didn’t know – at least, not her real name.
Some time in, Shelley became aware that the penis in her mouth was lifeless. She stopped to look up and saw the fixed expression on his face. It wasn’t changing. He wasn’t moving. He looked like a waxwork from Madame Tussauds.
“What are you doing?” she asked, prodding his chest. “Stop fucking around,” she shouted through the hairs in his ear.
After a vigorous shaking failed to extract even the slightest reaction, she put her fingers under his nostrils. He wasn’t breathing. That was when she called Marianne.
***
From the console table, Shelley removed the remaining rocks. She wrapped them inside clingfilm then stashed them in her cigarette box. She dismantled the crack pipe. The smaller parts – elastic band, tin foil, broken biro – she put in her handbag. The abused mini Evian bottle, she put in her small suitcase.
Crouched down by the side of the mahogany bed, she methodically repacked her work paraphernalia. Two vibrators, one black strap-on dildo, handcuffs and another set of underwear were all she’d taken out her case.
Inside a crystal jar on the bathroom shelf, she found cotton wool. She wetted half a dozen pieces and, in the absence of eye makeup remover, added hand lotion. She scrubbed at the black around her eyes and the dark-grey lines that streaked her face. To stop her bloodshot eyeballs burning, she splashed them repeatedly with cold water.
Her face clean and dry, she evened the tone with powder foundation. On the blank canvas, she swirled pink blush on the cheeks, brushed black mascara through the blonde lashes and drew a line of black on the upper eyelids. To finish, she painted red on the lips, perfectly matching this week’s manicure.
After drying her hair, she was ready to leave. She scanned the room, checking she hadn’t left anything behind. Suddenly, she thought of fingerprints. She ran into the bathroom and grabbed a towel.
Keeping her head turned away from the dead john, she wiped down the telephone on the bedside table. Next to the phone stood a champagne flute – red lip prints on the rim – the one from which she’d drunk a Buck’s Fizz. She picked it up inside the towel and polished it.
Flitting around the suite, she cleaned the bedside tables, the console table, the bureau, and everything else from the headboard to the ornaments in case she’d touched something unknowingly. In the bathroom, she wiped down the marble surfaces and glass shelves. Remembering the cotton wool in the bin, she fished out the blackened, wet balls and dropped them down the toilet. She flushed, watching them disappear. Then she flushed again to make certain they were gone. She wiped the cistern handle before throwing the towel in the bath.
Turning to leave, she looked in the mirror. The feeling that someone had put a stitch in her upper lip and was tugging at the thread looked as strange in her reflection as it felt on her f
ace. This delayed after-effect didn’t always occur but when it did, it always outlasted the shakes – sometimes by a day or a few, other times by months. However, on judging the catalytic incident – and considering the tsunami convulsion was already a weak breaker – there was a chance she’d be restored to an untwitching state in time for tomorrow night’s dinner.
***
Shelley stood in the hallway, closing the hotel room door behind her. Waiting for the lift, she brushed her fingers through her thick, blonde hair. Though freshly washed and dried, that didn’t stop its tendency to knot. Also knotted was her stomach. She pulled it in with a deep breath and raised her shoulders, standing straight, and taller than her natural five-foot and six-inches in her high stilettos.
Chameleon-like, she was adept at entering and exiting hotels at all times of the day and night without drawing attention. To blend in, she gave the impression of a guest, wearing business attire and carrying a case. She appeared to know the way to the lifts, and when she didn’t, she could feign it.
Indelibly stamped in her memory was the floor plan of her exit, even though this was only her third visit to The Lanesborough. She hadn’t had to rely on it as often as The Hilton, The Dorchester or The Four Seasons – the Park Lane hotels to which she was most often called – but The Lanesborough was stored with The Ritz, The Savoy, Claridges and numerous other London hotels she worked in less frequently.
With the air of confidence she’d mastered in faking, she strutted across the main hall. Tunnel vision for the grand exit. Her heart pounding so hard in her chest, as if preparing for its own escape, was disregarded.
She’d just made it into the drizzle outside when a low voice called out from behind her, “Good night, madam.”
The uniformed porter startled her, but her calm exterior remained intact and she replied, “Good night,” without a backward glance.
***
Approaching her Mercedes on Grosvnor Crescent, Shelley muddled through her handbag to find the key. She heard a banging noise. In fright, she looked up and down the street. It was devoid of people.