Two Shades of the Lilac Sunset

by Rosen Trevithick

  “It was a political protest against victim blaming.”

  Nat took a deep breath. “This changes everything.”

  “Really?”

  Nat said nothing.

  “Really?”

  “Let’s not air our dirty laundry outside. Come upstairs with me. And it’s not because I’m planning on attacking you, or whatever else it is that you think all men would do to women given half a chance.”

  “But I don’t think that all men …”

  Nat strode up the street and Willow felt compelled to go with him. She hated being misunderstood. She didn’t like him being angry with her and was keen to know exactly what she was supposed to have done wrong. Did he want her to have slept with other men? She grabbed her bag from the floor, and followed Nat up the road.

  Nat turned toward a block of seafront flats – five storeys of windows and white brickwork with a parking garage beneath. He unlocked the main door.

  Willow looked puzzled. “I thought these were for people above a certain age?”

  “It depends how much you’re willing to pay.”

  The foyer was well-lit, but when they neared the lift, Willow felt shrouded in doubt. This man might be the sexiest creature she had ever seen, but she hardly knew him. “I should go.”

  Nat threw his hands up and sighed. “All right. All right, Miss Cassidy. If that’s what you really want.”

  “It is,” she said, softly. “I’d like to see you again, but I’d rather take things more slowly.” She rose onto tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek, but he shrank away. “I had a lovely evening.”

  Nat didn’t reply.

  “Goodbye.”

  No response.

  “Thanks for the wine.”

  Willow walked away in a state of confusion. It was the oddest date she’d ever been on: hot, undeniably – she’d never kissed like that before – but then suddenly cold. She couldn’t work out what she’d done wrong. Was being a virgin such a bad thing? At least two of her uni friends regularly made a joke of wanting to sleep with her simply because she was a virgin.

  She walked out onto the seafront and crossed the road to be nearer the bay. As biting at the night was becoming, she felt she needed the rejuvenating buzz of the sea to help clear her mind. She walked back towards the beach café – towards home.

  Her phone bleeped. She reached inside her handbag and grabbed it.

  Nat: ‘Do you really think I could hurt you?’

  She stopped walking and reflected on the evening. She had simply been following basic personal safety guidelines. She wasn’t reacting to anything Nat had said or done. She remembered him saying that he’d hold her tightly and wrap them both in a duvet. She began to wonder if there was still time to turn back …

  This whole situation felt like one horrible misunderstanding. Here was a man who had made her feel intense, breath-taking emotions after only three meetings; was she going to walk away because of a misunderstanding?

  She wanted to call Demi but she knew that Demi was out with Ross – or possibly in with Ross. This was a decision Willow was going to have to make on her own. She started to wish that she’d got losing her virginity over with when she was a teenager, then she might’ve felt comfortable diving into bed with Nat.

  Willow turned around and started walking back towards Nat’s. Then she started to jog – the night was far too cold for ambling. She jogged past the beach café, up the hill and beneath the little folly known as The Chapel.

  Suddenly she became aware of a shadow entering the tunnel from the other side. She recognised the scent – ‘Le Beau Male’.

  “Miss Cassidy?”

  Despite the pitch darkness their lips found each other.

  “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I was rushing you.”

  “I’m sorry too,” replied Willow. “I freaked out.”

  “We can stay out here and talk, if you’d rather,” he offered, guiding her out of the tunnel and towards the railings above the seawall. “I can probably access the Beethoven clip with 3G …”

  “No, it’s okay. I was being stupid. I would love to see your apartment, if you still want to take me there.”

  They walked arm in arm back to Nat’s building and, this time, Willow met the lift with excitement, remembering how rubbish she’d felt when she thought she might not see him again. No sooner had the doors kissed, than they did the same. They both ran their hands frantically over each other’s bodies, like an octopus with an itch.

  Willow’s heart was pounding as Nat unlocked the door to his apartment. She followed him inside in what seemed to be pitch dark. But then she realised it was not completely dark. She saw a recognisable cluster of golden lights – the lights of the ships out in the bay.

  Wow! The window took up the entire wall of an expansive room. Using the little light from the corridor outside, she moved forwards tentatively.

  “Do you want me to turn the light on?” asked Nat, as he closed the door.

  “Don’t you dare!” she replied. “I want to look at the night without the glare of a bulb.”

  “You won’t crash into anything,” Nat assured her. “The only item in the whole house is a kettle. Not that that’s much use, as I don’t even have any mugs.”

  Willow got to the window and gazed out, leaning on a metal safety bar, which she assumed was there for safety reasons. The view was one she’d seen a thousand times, but from this high apartment she felt like it was their view, and theirs alone. From here you couldn’t see any other buildings or cars on the road – just the vast expanse of charcoal sea, framed by the black shapes of Castle Point and the layers of headlands to the right. “Is this part of the top floor?”

  “No.”

  “You mean there are better views?”

  “No, I mean, this is the top floor.”

  “The whole floor?”

  “Yes. This one was designed for the original developer, back in the day.” Nat put an arm around Willow’s shoulder. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Magnificent!”

  “It’s even better by day. As soon as the estate agent showed me in, I thought: I don’t care what the rest of the flat is like, I’m having it.”

  Willow smiled. “I would have been the same.” If I could ever afford something like this.

  “Just one last thing before I turn the light on,” said Nat, softly.

  Willow turned her face towards his.

  He gently kissed her lips. “One last thing apart from that.” He got out his phone. Willow remembered it from the hotel – one of those fancy, ultra-thin, big-screen phablet jobbies. He tapped it a dozen or so times and then passed it to Willow. He stood behind her, holding the safety bar with both of his hands, watching over her shoulder. Willow felt safe, enclosed with the glorious view on one side and Nat on all the others.

  She watched a video clip begin. It appeared to be random people walking around a square somewhere in Europe. A couple of kids on bikes and one on a scooter rode by. The faint chime of a bell could be heard. A young girl with fuzzy dark hair dropped a coin into a hat. A chap playing a double bass began to play. Willow recognised the song instantly – she’d learnt it on recorder when she was a kid. Was this Beethoven?

  A cellist set up beside the bassist and began to play. By now a small crowd had gathered, intrigued. As if from nowhere, a violinist and oboe player joined the grouping. The music built. Willow thought it was kind of cool; she could see why a classical music fanatic would like it.

  But then a whole string of violinists appeared from a doorway. A child climbed a lamppost for a better view. Willow felt herself become that child, glued to the orchestra. Spectators took out their phones and began recording. A grin lit up the face of an older lady. Then some trombonists rocked up!

  Willow’s mouth fell open, watching the faces of the crowd as the hum erupted into vast orchestral cries filling the square and filling her senses.

  A choir hidden amongst the crowd began to sing. It was electrifying. Ev
ery single hair on Willow’s body stood on end. The kid up the lamppost hungrily conducted with a finger. Spectators begin to join the chorus.

  The music sped up, and the intensity gathered further. Willow barely noticed a tear run down her cheek. The final flourishes of the song leapt from the screen, and the crowd went wild with applause.

  Willow was stunned. She stared at the blank screen, half expecting a live violinist to pop out.

  “And that,” breathed Nat, “is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”

  Willow blinked a few times, transformed by the music and how perfectly the flash mob format had complemented the piece. “Fucking hell!” were the only words she could muster.

  Nat grunted in agreement. He silently removed the phone from her grasp and then wrapped his arms tightly around her. “Imagine you, me, a top of the range sound system, Beethoven and this view.”

  Willow felt seduced – not that she was being seduced, but that she already had been. All she could think about was Nat and the times they might have together. She hardly knew him but she had never wanted somebody so badly.

  Suddenly, he stepped away. He strode across the room and turned the light on. Willow squinted as her eyes adjusted to the light, feeling as though she had been rudely awoken from a magical dream. She found herself standing in a large, open-plan room containing a massive, modern kitchen.

  “I think you should go,” said Nat, unexpectedly.

  “W-what?” whispered Willow, her lip quivering.

  “I’m bad news,” he informed her. “I’m not right for you.”

  “How can you say that? You hardly know me.”

  “You’re sweet. I can see that.”

  “I’m not that sweet,” objected Willow, thinking about the time she went to A&E after trying marijuana crackers and the man she’d floored for lifting her skirt in Burger King.

  “Do you want to know why I was horrified when you said you were a virgin?”

  “You were horrified?”

  “I’m a messed up man, Miss Cassidy. I have sex – I need sex – but not the way other men do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I like certain things – dark things. I corrupt women. I damage women. The sweeter they are, the more damage I do.”

  What did he mean? What was he referring to? “It sounds like you’re saying that I shouldn’t have come back.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  Willow felt her insides jerk.

  “But not for the reason you think. I’d never do anything to hurt you, not unless you agreed.”

  “Agreed?”

  Nat walked over to the window once again, and looked out across the inky bay, with his hands clutching the metal bar. Willow could see the veins in his arms pop to the surface.

  Finally, he turned back to her. “You don’t even know if you like sex. How can I ask you for more when you have no idea what that entails?”

  “More than sex?”

  “See!” he cried, turning back to her and raising his arms with exasperation. “You couldn’t even begin to understand what I need.”

  “So tell me?”

  “No, Miss Cassidy. I’m afraid I can’t. Will you allow me to escort you home?”

  “I can get myself home,” Willow told him. She grabbed her patchwork handbag and unlatched the door.

  Nat didn’t move from the window.

  “So that’s that then?” Willow was struggling to digest what had just happened. How could something go from so good to so bad in a matter of minutes?

  “I’m sorry.”

  And that’s all he said to her.

  Willow walked home exhausted, having been through the whole gamut of emotions in one evening – lust, fear, excitement and now, apparently, a break-up. How could she feel like a relationship had ended after just three meetings? What spell had this man put on her? She wondered if she’d been blinded by the penthouse and his good looks, but that didn’t sound like her. Her last boyfriend had lived in a bedsit and looked like Ronnie O’Sullivan mixed with Ronnie Corbett.

  What did ‘more than sex’ mean? She had been led to believe that sex was the absolute pinnacle. That was what separated her from everybody else. She’d been fingered, she’d given her ex a hand job in the back of his Fiesta, but because she hadn’t leapt that final hurdle, she wore the stigma of virginity.

  Perhaps it was just the mystery but something made her feel like she was on a bungee cord just waiting to spring back. She willed herself to forget about him, but her lips could still feel his kisses.

  Evening of Sunday 19 th April – inside Five Degrees West

  “What about handcuffs, yay or nay?” asked Ross.

  “Yay, definitely.”

  Ross beamed.

  “I’ve never talked to a guy about sex in so much detail before sleeping with him.”

  Ross’s dimples grew deeper still. “You just confirmed that I’m getting lucky tonight.”

  “Who said anything about tonight?” Demi walked playful fingers up his arm.

  “Okay, I understand. There’s no rush.”

  “I’m teasing, you daft ape!” Demi planted a mischievous kiss on his lips. “Your place or mine?”

  “I honestly do not mind, as long as you’re there.”

  “Nah, I thought I’d go and hang out in your bed alone.” Demi imagined Ross flinging her backwards onto his bed. He seemed like the flinging type. She grinned. She’d love to go back to his.

  Then her thoughts turned to Willow. She remembered Nat abandoning her at the hotel bar and hoped that he was being more attentive on their date tonight. “Actually, do you mind if we go to mine? I want to be in when Willow gets back.”

  “It’s lovely that you care about your sister so much, but she’s twenty-one, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but she’s out with Nat. I know you’ve known him for years so don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s something about him I‘m not sure about.”

  Evening of Sunday 19 th April – inside a house on Mayfield Road

  One mile inland, inside a pebble-dashed identikit house, Ross held Demi against her purple, satin duvet. He looked down at her with a deliberately stern, menacing expression but his twinkling eyes betrayed him.

  “Too bad we didn’t stop off at yours to pick up those handcuffs …” teased Demi.

  “I want to explore you!” He lifted her short, blonde hair with his nose and ran his tongue along the ridge of her ear. The warm tickle made her squirm. Her instincts were to shrivel away but she couldn’t move with her arms held firmly against the bed.

  His lips moved down her neck – little kisses that grew into suction locks, embellished by his tongue. One moment it felt like being brushed with a feather duster, the next like being smeared in warm treacle. She knew getting marks would make her look like a silly, reckless teenager, but she felt turned on by the idea of him leaving his stamp.

  He ran his tongue toward her nipples. She kicked her legs to release the rising tension.

  “Am I going to have to tie you down?”

  “If you like,” she replied, with a wicked smile.

  Ross looked around the room until his eyes fell on Demi’s dressing gown belt. She beamed with excitement, reading his mind. He grabbed the belt and used it to tie her left leg to one of the lower bed legs. Demi wriggled the other leg defiantly. “What sort of Dom are you?”

  “Oh, you’ll pay for that!”

  Demi squealed with a mixture of amusement and intoxication as Ross leapt onto the bed, launching his square hips between her legs. She saw the intensity in his eyes as he ground his crotch against hers, massaging her groin with his eager erection.

  Morning of Monday 20 th April – inside a house on Mayfield Road

  Willow couldn’t stop thinking about Nat. What did he mean by those things he had said? She began to wish she’d never set eyes on him. Sure, she’d enjoyed kissing, wrapping her legs around his waist, kissing him again … But had it been worth the rest of the roller-coaster ride?
Emotionally seduced and then banished with an explanation she could not make sense of.

  At least Demi’s love life seemed to be going well. She’d rushed off to work leaving sleeping beauty upstairs in bed. Willow wasn’t sure whether she admired or disapproved of Demi’s ability to trust so readily.

  She decided to keep herself busy with her sewing. She had her heart set on the exhibition at the Princess Pavilion. The theme was ‘Change’ so she wanted to finish her prototype autumn-leaves dress. Autumn always seemed the season that brought the most noticeable change, stripping entire trees in a matter of days.

  Annoyingly, she found that she was out of lining fabric. She didn’t particularly fancy a trip to Trago’s, but perhaps getting out of the house would be good for her. Then she remembered Ross. She probably shouldn’t leave somebody they hardly knew alone in their house.

  There was a firm knock at the front door – not the usual doorbell ring, but a knock. Willow put down her sewing, walked into the hall and opened the front door. There was nobody there.

  Looking around, Willow noticed a package on the doormat – a brown cube about thirty centimetres across. Why would a courier leave it on the step in full view of the neighbours, instead of simply waiting for her to get to the door? She quickly scanned the road but couldn’t see a delivery van.

  She picked up the box. Her name was on it, but there was no address. The sender had got her title wrong too; she was ‘Ms’, not ‘Miss’. Then Willow remembered that there was someone who knew her as ‘Miss Cassidy’. But why would he leave a box on her doorstep? How did he even know where she lived?

  Willow took the box inside and shut the door. She carried it into the living room and scored the parcel tape with one of her keys.

  Her eyes popped. Inside was the box for a Nikon DSLR. Surely there wasn’t a camera in there? The sender must have used the box to package something else. She carefully turned the parcel out onto the sofa. However, the camera box seemed to have its tamper-proof seal intact. He hadn’t bought her a camera, had he?

  Willow’s heart pounded as she peeled her way into the box. She looked at the camera in admiration: alloy body, high capacity battery … It was professional equipment. If it weren’t for the ‘Miss Willow Cassidy’ handwritten on the outer packaging, she’d have assumed she’d picked up somebody else’s parcel by mistake.