‘Look, please don’t ask me, Tessa. There’s nothing I can say. I promised Eileen faithfully I wouldn’t tell a soul.’
‘Yes, but I’m not just anybody. She probably meant odd friends, people she couldn’t trust to keep a confidence. You know you can trust me. You love me, Michael – or so you keep on saying – and yet you dig in your heels when I ask you about one really vital thing.’
‘But that’s the point – I can’t make out why it should matter quite so much. All right, I can see you want to feel secure with whoever you choose as your GP, but there are half a dozen doctors in that practice, so if you’re worried about Edwards, why not go for one of the other five?’
She detected a note of irritation in his voice – the first time he’d ever been anything but totally indulgent. She was wasting her breath, pushing him too far – worse, endangering her whole plan. He would never betray Eileen in cold blood, but if she waited till he was wild, on heat and reckless – as he had been when he climaxed in her mouth – he would do anything she asked. She was being made to realize by some unseen force or power that she hadn’t played her part; that apart from that one session, she had cheated him and rationed him, as he was rationing her now. She had kept her distance sexually since that Saturday in the Quantocks; actually spent the night in the child’s bed, so he wouldn’t touch her in his sleep. How grudging she had been, how stubbornly shortsighted. The fact that he was resisting in his turn was the clue to her own failure, her lack of any progress. But she was being shown the way; told how she should act – not only in the bedroom, but here at table, too. No good picking at her food, making him worry needlessly that she was sickening for some illness. She must eat with greed and gusto, as she had always done with Michael; savour every mouthful, relish taste and smell.
She crammed in a chunk of chicken breast, then half a dozen chips, only pausing for a second to gulp down her Blue Nun.
‘Fantastic wine!’ she said. ‘And the chicken’s really great – so tender I can cut it with my fork.’
Michael cut into his own steak, like a happy prisoner granted a reprieve, allowed at last to relax and enjoy his meal. He swallowed his first mouthful, then cocked his head, listening to the music. They were playing ‘Endless Love’, and he began to mouth the words, repeating them with such intense emotion she had a sudden crazy fantasy he’d written them himself, then ordered his private love-song to be relayed on the loudspeakers.
‘My love, there’s only you in my life,
The only thing that’s right …
And I want to share all my love
With you – no one else will do –
Yes, you will always be my endless love.’
The second verse was drowned by a burst of clapping. An enormous ice-cream sundae was being carried in triumphantly and set down on the table next to theirs. Three celebratory sparklers were spluttering on the summit, like beacons on the Mount Everest of cream. It looked enough for an army – bananas, cherries, pineapple, heaped up in the dish, and at least half a dozen different coloured ice-creams. The lower foothills were sprinkled lavishly with flaked and toasted nuts, curls of chocolate, shreds of candied peel. Tessa watched the four couples at the table all dig in with their spoons, wolfing cream and ice-cream, crunching nuts, guzzling juicy cherries. That sundae was important, a sign to her how she must be herself – unstinting, inexhaustible, and wildly hugely sensuous. She must allow Michael to devour her, suck out her cream and syrup, enjoy all her luscious fruits. She must sparkle for him, overflow; froth and flame and glisten.
‘Hey, Michael, shall we order one the same?’
‘Not quite as big, I hope!’
‘Yes, just as big! I’m starving. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I feel I could really pig myself today.’
He gazed at her with such undisguised relief, she felt tears start to her eyes. He’d been agonizing recently about how little she was eating. Eileen had died of stomach cancer, which had started with a loss of weight, so he was probably secretly terrified that history would repeat itself. It was part of his obsessive love to watch her every mouthful; tempt her with choice titbits, like a scraggy puppy who needed fattening up. She must respect that love, encourage it, despite her guilt at being unable to return it. She picked her wine-glass up again. ‘So how about that toast you were proposing? Shall we drink it now?’
He raised his glass, delighted, chinked it against her own, but left the words to her this time.
‘To St Valentine’s Day,’ she whispered. ‘And to true and endless love. And to a perfect meal with a marvellous man. And especially to our last course – the one we’ll have upstairs!’
‘Dry me!’ Tessa ordered, as she emerged dripping from the bath. She snuggled against Michael, enveloped in two towels. He began to dab her gingerly, but she didn’t want things tentative; knew she had to play the hussy, the abandoned panting whore – and this time bring some conviction to the role. She tossed her hair back, thrust her naked breasts towards his face. He hadn’t finished undressing, so she unzipped his neat grey trousers; discovered he’d bought new underpants – white boxer shorts patterned with tiny aeroplanes. She fumbled at the waistband, touched, despite herself. He had tried so hard, and even though he’d got it wrong – looking comic rather than sexy, with Tiger Moths swooping across his groin – there was no way she could laugh at his earnest wish to please her.
She was still feeling rather thrown by the fact he had her photo in his wallet. She’d noticed it in the restaurant when he was settling up with the waitress, and had realized only then why he’d asked her very casually, a week or so ago, if she happened to have a snapshot of herself. She’d dug out a rather ancient one taken in the garden, with a background of a rubbish heap and a yard or two of washing-line. He had snipped off line and rubbish, keeping only her head and smile, which were now treasured in his wallet and carried with him everywhere. It had startled her so much because what she’d craved two months ago (when she’d first seen Joyce’s photograph in Dr Edwards’ wallet) had happened with the wrong Michael. Apart from that cruel irony, it was also a reminder of how far she was from the goal of finding the real one; of sitting in his pocket, nestling close against him every day.
Well, all the more reason for changing course this evening; using every trick in the book to satisfy this Michael, so he’d divulge what he knew about Dr Michael Edwards. She eased his pants off sensuously, hands lingering on his buttocks, stroking down his calves, then returned her slow soft fingers to the insides of his thighs. He wasn’t stiff at all yet, but that was her own fault, for behaving so hysterically their first weekend away. She would have to win his trust again, prove that sex needn’t end in trauma.
She kissed him on the mouth, tasting fierce mint toothpaste, which had killed the subtle flavour of their rum-and-raisin ice-cream. His expression was ecstatic; his eyes were tightly shut – the closed lids like a barrier partitioning them in separate worlds. She had deserted him, pushed off, left this cheap and garish room, and returned to Michael Edwards – to his arms, his smell, his skills, his bed, his bulk. The kiss grew wilder, involving teeth and tongues; Michael Chalmers learning – her obedient eager pupil, while she was back in Oxford, as Michael Edwards’ acolyte.
At last, she pulled away. Michael slowly opened his eyes again, gazed at her, entranced. ‘God bless you,’ he said softly, his voice unsteady and intense. ‘I thank Him every night, you know, for sending you. I know I don’t deserve you, and when I think of what you give me – all your love and …’
His reverent, almost prayerful tone roused shame in her, and pity. She was tempted to ditch her role of whore and play the part of mother – make up to him for the fact that the love he prized so much was nothing but a sham. But that would ruin everything, turn him into a little boy, when he was limp enough already. She must try a different tack.
She took his hand, led him to the mean-sized bed with its hideous purple coverlet in some shiny cheapo fabric. The only other things in the
room were a wooden chair, a tatty built-in cupboard, and what was labelled a hospitality tray, consisting of cups, kettle, tea-bags and a mini-pack of custard creams, with a notice propped against it, saying ‘Beware of overfilling kettle’.
She stretched out on the bed, settled him beside her, trying not to recoil from his small and pasty body, the almost hairless legs, the red mark round his waist where the elastic from his boxer shorts had impressed its knobbly pattern on his skin. She cupped her left hand round his prick, while her right hand dawdled down her own body and began to stroke her pubic hair. He watched her with a mixture of guilt and fascination, like a schoolboy sneaking his first look at a pornographic video. She opened her legs wider, let her fingers brush her labia, languorously caressing them, spreading them apart. She was doing it for Michael, could hear his gloating voice: ‘You’ve got these quite amazing labia, which stick out like little wings.’
She tweaked the little wings, recalling all his other words – excited and admiring words, which had turned her from a novice into Jezebel, Delilah. He’d loved to see her masturbate; had encouraged her to go quite wild their last weekend away together – that fatal worrying weekend, when she’d realized she was pregnant still, but had let her body scorch and slam, while her shocked mind slunk away. He’d known nothing of her fears; had simply egged her on; told her she looked sensational with her fist stuck up her snatch, and her nipples stiff like tent-pegs. She’d come five times in a row, spurred by his involvement, the way he seemed to share each come; crying out when she did, gliding his hands across her breasts, then teasingly down her thighs; slipping a finger into her mouth so she could bite it at the height of each explosion. His namesake was less blatant; still the paralysed voyeur, watching furtively but greedily as she licked her finger, slid it slowly in. She moved her hips in time with it, circling, gently rocking; eyes now closed, so she could transport herself to Foxlow Woods, feel the warm sun smooching her, the tall voluptuous grasses tickling her bare skin.
Her hand faltered, fingers tensing, her whole body taut, uptight. Something had gone wrong. It was hurting, really hurting; what had once been pleasure now experienced as pain. She must have been damaged in the hospital – maybe even deliberately, as a punishment for murdering her child. Punishment like that was only natural. Abelard had suffered it himself, accepting his castration as perfectly appropriate. ‘They attacked that part of my body which had sinned.’ The same applied to her. How could she arouse herself by fondling her baby’s passage to the world? That baby had been dead, deformed; must have somehow tainted her as it struggled out and down; left her insides botched. And if one small finger hurt so much, then how in God’s name would she bear it when Michael started ramming in? If only they could go to bed to sleep. She was so tired she ached all over; her body like a dragging weight with nothing to support it; her mind so full of chaos it needed emptying into a litter-bin. She longed to transform Michael from a lover to a nurse, so that instead of trying to screw her, he would wrap her in a blanket, dose her with a happy-pill, and sit and watch beside her while she slept. Or if only she could call for April; hear her mother charging up the stairs – a Band-Aid for her damaged cunt; some sweeties for the invalid.
She was tempted to escape, to dash back home and tell her mother everything – that there wasn’t any Ivor, no blossoming romance, no wealthy cultured parents who already accepted her as one of the family; that there was only Michael Chalmers, his thirty-four-years-older body damp against her own. But she couldn’t let him down, especially not tonight, when she’d committed herself to serve him, focus solely on his pleasure. She’d simply have to accept the pain, or try to disregard it; continue to play Jezebel, as her atonement for his own pain. He was already looking anxious, probably wondering why she’d stopped; snuffed the sparklers on his sundae, axed the best treat of his life. She spread her legs again, used two fingers this time, thrusting them right up, and smiling when they hurt – for Michael Edwards’ sake. She began to rub herself quite fiercely, determined to keep her mind on Foxlow Woods and the Cotswolds; remembering how she’d come then, duplicating the movements – the screwed-up face, splayed legs. She added Michael’s feverish voice to help her bear the pain; his sudden rasping shout resounding through the countryside: ‘You randy little bitch – you great brazen shameless hussy!’
Her eyes blinked slowly open. She could hear a different voice – sheepish, inarticulate, as it stammered out her name.
‘Oh, Tessa, you’re … you’re …’
She must be doing right. Michael Chalmers was in paradise, judging by his face; his small prick stirring slightly as she cradled it with her other hand. She wouldn’t stint him this time. If she’d come five times with Michael Edwards, then he should have no less.
‘Does it turn you on to watch me?’ she asked tauntingly.
‘Christ, yes!’
She had never heard him swear before, realized he was so carried away, that his usual tepid language must now seem quite inadequate. She could feel his eyes devouring her as she changed position on the bed, kneeling up and leaning back against the wall, with her pelvis pushed right forward and her hair streaming down behind her. Michael Edwards had taught her that, and had joined in with his hand and mouth; lying underneath her with his head between her knees. She craved to see him there now; to be the brazen hussy screaming out ‘Go on!’ instead of the cringeing booby struggling not to cry. At least it didn’t matter that her voice was choked, since he could interpret that as passion.
‘Oh, it’s wonderful!’ she sobbed. ‘I just can’t tell you how it feels!’
He squeezed her hand, the damp and sticky hand she was using to torment herself – and enthral him in the process. Her other hand was busy with his fast-reviving prick. That was all that mattered – Michael was responding – his eyes burning with excitement, his cheeks a hectic pink, a dribble of saliva seeping from his lips. His words were incoherent – a babble of superlatives, mixed with astonished exclamations that any girl would actually let him watch her, and could still be so worked up when she’d come several times already.
She dropped down to the bed, so that she was crouching on all fours, gently took Michael’s hand and guided it between her legs, using his finger as a dildo. His hand hurt more than hers did; the dildo clumsy, jabbing at her, sending waves of scarlet pain juddering through her groin.
‘It’s fantastic!’ she cried out. ‘Don’t stop. Go on, go on!’
His prick was pluming in response; his face flushed with bursting pride. She didn’t begrudge him his delight. Every climax she feigned – however much it cost her – was a milestone on the way to Michael Edwards. Later on this evening, she would be rewarded in her turn.
‘Oh, Tessa, please, I …’ The sentence petered out. He was attempting to show her with his body what he wanted; nudging his stiff prick against her thighs, begging to come into her.
She stroked the swollen tip, then ran a tantalizing finger right down to the hilt and back. ‘Would you like it if I came like that when you come – at exactly the same time?’
He nodded, too hyped up to form any words at all now. His hair was damp, dishevelled, one strand falling in his eyes; a film of sweat glistening on his forehead.
‘And come so loudly I wake the entire hotel?’
He laughed, a whooping belly-laugh, nothing like his usual modest chuckle.
‘And shall we do it like dogs? You be Jasper, I’ll be Snowy.’ She pulled him to the floor, knelt down on the carpet, explained the way she wanted him to mount her. She kept working on his prick, kneading it and boosting it, to make sure it didn’t slacken while she spelt out the conditions. It was vital that he understood.
‘Listen, Michael, darling, there’s something I want you to do – for me.’
‘Of course,’ he panted, desperate to ram in; his body braced and quivering like a greyhound’s at the starting-gate.
‘You promise that you’ll do it – I mean, promise really solemnly?’
He d
idn’t answer, but his prick was shouting ‘yes!’; no longer able to hold back, but butting roughly in.
She kept her own hips still. ‘Say ‘‘I promise’’,’ she commanded.
‘I promise.’
‘I promise faithfully to do whatever Tessa asks me.’
‘I promise faithfully to do whatever …’ He was coming – straight away – slamming from behind; his laboured gasps and whimperings swelling to a full-throated Jasper yelp. She kept her own part of the bargain, yammering and heaving; trying to blank out the sensation of being torn apart. How could such a small man grind and stab like that, and why was there no room for him, when she’d always opened avidly for Michael? But Michael was the reason she was doing it at all. Once she was restored to him, the ordeal would be over, and any moment now she would be closer to that goal; shown the way by what Eileen Chalmers knew. She gave a last wild shout of triumph, arching her whole body up, shimmying with her hips, and paying Chalmers in advance by her final breathless words.
‘Michael, you’re amazing! That was the best come of my life.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tessa stood outside the Oxfam shop, gazing at the wedding dress on the dummy in the window. It was perfect – simply perfect, with its nipped-in waist and full dramatic skirt, the embroidery on the bodice, the long tight buttoned sleeves. And it was obviously significant that it was being sold by Oxfam, and not by the Cancer shop or the Spastics Society, or some mere market stall. Oxfam had been born in Oxford – as had her love itself. The only problem was the price. There was no ticket on it – always a bad sign – and she had precisely £4.22 in her purse. She’d still not found a job, and although she’d now applied for Income Support, it hadn’t yet come through. Even when it did, she would have to give the bulk of it to April. That was only fair, when she’d been living at home for the last six months and contributing almost nothing.
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