by Paula Hawkes
“It was ten years ago last month. I still think of him every day. He was the best dad in the world.” She stopped herself before emotions got the better of her.
Mark reached forward and placed his hand gently on her arm. She suspected that Devak would be frowning from the dark recesses of the coffee shop, but his hand was warm and comforting. She placed her hand over his, tapped it awkwardly a couple of times then withdrew.
“Anyway. Moving swiftly on,” she said. “I know so little about you, Mark.” His name felt right in her mouth now, the single syllable forming easily and feeling good as it resonated from the smooth ‘M’ to the final satisfying click of the ‘k’. When alone she would sometimes say his name out loud, in different ways, testing how it sounded. She wasn’t immune to how madly infatuated that seemed.
“There’s not much to know really. It’s been an unremarkable life so far, but certainly not one to complain about. I love my photography, and being a barman pays the rent.”
“You’re Australian. But you’re here.”
“Very observant,” he teased. “I was born in Ireland, and my parents moved to Australia when I was thirteen. It’s a great country but I wanted to live in London for a bit before I settle over there. So here I am.”
She was aware that he had told her little more than she already knew or could guess for herself. He was obviously determined to remain a man of mystery, which was ok by her. There was no reason for her to know his backstory in any depth. He was, after all, just a friend, an acquaintance to pass ten minutes or so with each day, in idle but pleasant conversation. She looked forward to her daily encounter but she didn’t want to invite any escalation of intimacy. Looking at her watch she realized it was time to go.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she said as she stood up.
“I suspect so. See you soon China Dark.”
It gave her an illicit thrill when he said her whole name like that. She loved how he pronounced it with his geographically unique, strongly male accent. It felt like he was in charge, like a schoolteacher talking down to a pupil, and for some reason that excited her. She was getting used to avoiding the flushing red embarrassment that painted her cheeks every time he said or did something that pleased her, but inwardly she still turned to jelly.
She walked up the street, waving at Mark over her shoulder in a suitably platonic way. All of a sudden her right foot turned sharply, the heel of her shoe slipping under her foot and her ankle twisting painfully. She stumbled and fell to her knees. This time there was no controlling the flush of red that burned her face with discomfort and humiliation, and while the pain was intense, it was the embarrassment that was almost unbearable. Her loss of dignity as the Jimmy Choos let her down felt like a betrayal. A very expensive betrayal, she thought poignantly. She sat there on the hard pavement almost in tears rubbing her very sore ankle, in the forlorn hope that no one had noticed. Quick, heavy footsteps told her that hope was indeed in vain. She prayed it wasn’t Mark, but of course it was.
“Are you ok? Stupid question, of course you’re not. Here, let me take a look at that.” Genuine concern creased his features but failed to reduce his breath-taking good looks she thought. “Here let me help you try to stand.”
He easily lifted her up from the ground, but she could hardly put any weight on her damaged right ankle. He put an arm around her back and under her shoulder, supporting as much of her weight as he could, not easy given how much taller than her he was.
“I don’t think I can walk far,” she cried out with utter frustration. She was going to ask him to help her back to work but then realized that she didn’t want her colleagues seeing her with this man. It would raise too many awkward and unnecessary questions that she wasn’t in the mood to answer. “Help me back to the café please, so I can sit down.”
“Better idea,” he said. “My place is literally just around the corner. I can put a cold compress on it there, to stop it from swelling further.”
She would have protested but the ankle was so painful that she would do almost anything to stop the pain. “Do you have any painkillers?” she asked.
“I have,” he smiled. “Come on, let’s take it slow.”
His place was, as he had promised, not very far at all. It was in the same direction as the pub where he worked but a little closer to the café. As they walked up the path to the large black front door a short, round man exited the building. She could feel Mark’s body stiffen beside her. “Hi, Tony.” There was no warmth in his greeting.
“Mark,” the man acknowledged. “Found a friend?” The question appeared to have undertones that China didn’t want to understand. His face was as round as his body and he didn’t appear to have any chin. His balding head was ringed with lank, greasy hair that was tied back into a stringy ponytail with a dirty looking elastic hair tie. He was sweating profusely and his lips were wet to the point of dribbling.
“This is China, Tony. She’s hurt her ankle so I’m just helping out.”
“I’m sure you are. I’ll leave you to it then, Mark. Enjoy.” And with that Tony waddled down the path and off up the road, glancing back over his shoulders occasionally, leering with unpleasant laughter.
“Well, now you’ve met the landlord,” he joked. But his eyes told her that he didn’t find the joke very funny. Awkwardly opening the door whilst still supporting China’s weight, he took her in and led her upstairs into a small but neat flat. The main room was compact and with minimal furniture or mess. She naturally expected a man’s flat to be in some disarray, but this looked almost unlived in. There were no magazines lying about, no dirty plates from the night before, no take-away cartons or boxes. Nothing predictable. No unpleasant, single-man-living-alone smells, just the faintest aroma of some spicy soap, suggestive with fresh woodland undertones.
He led her to a comfortable looking chair and sat her down. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
As he left the room China looked around for further elusive clues into his personality. There was a single, large, framed black and white photograph on a blank chimneybreast opposite her, a classically posed portrait of a beautiful anonymous woman draped in nothing but a half dropped silk kimono. The girl was in silhouette, and whilst the clinging silk rendered it beautifully erotic there was no explicitness to spoil the artfulness of the image.
On the coffee table in front of her were a couple of large hardback books on photography, and in the corner a large and expensive looking Nikon camera sat on its tripod, the dark eye of its lens facing into the room, all fairly obvious props for a photographer’s home. Next to the coffee table, to China’s left, was a long sofa of completely different material to the chair she was sitting on, indicating that the flat had been economically furnished for letting by someone with little eye for harmonious detail. She suspected that Tony had worked his unique interior design talents here.
The floor was a tired, polished wood, uneven and knotted, upon which there was a single red plain and rather threadbare rug which roughly marked the centre of the room. Strangely, there was no television, or hi-fi. It was difficult to glean any useful information about the inhabitant of such blandly furnished accommodation. The photography accessories were the only objects that spoke of Mark in any way.
When Mark returned he was carrying a small pack of frozen peas wrapped in a red-checked tea towel. He knelt in front of her and said, “You might want to remove those tights.”
She was shocked at the thought of removing any clothes in front of him but realized the obvious common sense in the statement. Very self-consciously she leant forwards and started to tug the tights off, shuffling her bottom and keeping her legs as close together as possible. All the while she was acutely aware that Mark was staring fixedly into her face, watching her squirm with awkwardness. “A gentleman would look away.”
“Then I’ll stay just where I am,” he grinned.
He carried on looking at her for a couple more moments then sighed and turned his head away, allowing her
the opportunity for a less elegant but more efficient removal of her tights. She crumpled them up and pressed them into her Louis Vuitton bag, hoping they wouldn’t catch on anything inside. On the sharp corner of the little business card, for example.
“There you go, you can look now,” she said.
He turned back to her and then gently grasped her calf with one hand. China shuddered inwardly as a fresh charge of electric sensation emanated from the point where his hand was in contact with her bare leg. His eyes never left hers as he slowly lifted the leg and softly placed the shockingly cold parcel onto her swollen ankle. She gasped at the sudden cold but maintained eye contact. What could she read in those big green eyes? They were as intense as ever, and he studied her eyes for any sort of response. Then they flared, a slight and momentary widening of the eyelids and pupils, accompanied by the briefest of almost feral grins. She felt herself melt and knew, but didn’t care, that her own flaring pupils were probably giving away far too much detail about how she was feeling. She couldn’t help it, the corners of her own mouth twitched into a smile, and her eyes flicked down to his mouth, noticing the width, the redness of his generous lips. It was a big mouth, made for devouring, she thought and had a sudden flashed image of herself as Red Riding Hood sitting before a wolf in human clothes.
“All the better to eat you with,” he rumbled, and then shook his head as if surprised at what he had just said. Although she was shocked that he appeared to have directly read her very thoughts, she laughed.
“You did just say that out loud you know?”
“Very inappropriate, and unlike me,” he said. Though she doubted that very much. Somehow she thought he would be very inappropriate whenever he felt like it. He lifted her leg further, resting it on his bent knee and kept gentle pressure on the makeshift ice-pack. China pushed her knees together, acutely aware that from his position he could easily see partly up her grey skirt.
Still their eyes remained in contact and China began to lose track of time, swimming in the depths of those sparkling grey seas. She felt like a small boat tossed on a jade, unforgiving ocean, her stomach churning. His irises were animated, she was convinced, with wave after wave of silver, sage and cobalt blues swirling in deep slow motion, and flecks of gold crested each swell providing brief flashes of brilliance. The colour left her cheeks as embarrassment was replaced by breathless rapture.
How much time passed, China neither knew nor cared. They were both startled out of this blissful rhapsody by the sound of a door slamming downstairs. China literally shook her head, as if waking from a dream. Finally she did wonder how long they had sat there and she looked down at her watch. It had only been ten minutes but it felt as if a whole afternoon had passed in their insulated bubble. The light coming through the window had darkened, presumably just a cloud drifting across the sun, and she shivered.
“I think I’d better get back to work. Let’s see how this ankle holds up then, nurse Mark.”
She stood slowly and the ice pack, no longer supported, fell to the floor with a frozen crunch. She tested her ankle gradually. It was still very sore but was at least now able to support some of her weight, even if there were dull shots of pain when she leant too much on it. She hobbled around the room, realizing she could walk as long as she took it very slowly. “I think I’ll be fine.”
She looked back. Mark was still kneeling in front of the chair, one arm still slightly raised, like a statue that had just lost an essential element. He seemed as frozen as the peas that were now spilling onto the floor. “Here, let me help you clear that up.” She started limping back over to where he knelt.
He broke out of his dream and stood up suddenly, almost making her jump. “No, don’t be silly. It’s my mess, I’ll clean it up.”
She picked up her bag, the untidily rolled tights spilling half out of the top, and placed a hand on his shoulder, the first time since their initial hand-shake that she had actively made contact with him rather than the other way around. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m really grateful.”
“Are you sure you’ll be ok?”
“I think so. It hurts, but I’m a big girl.”
His eyes flicked down to her chest, and he looked about to say something but then stopped.
She sighed, “Boys!” then laughed and turned to leave. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I’m sure.”
As she walked out of the front door a shocking realization occurred to China. She was going to have an affair with Mark. There was no doubt in her mind now. Her thoughts span in a whirlwind of emotions, reproach, guilt, excitement and pure lust. She could feel her body reacting excitedly to this heinous thought, betraying her, but she could do nothing about it. The inevitability seemed wrong, but somehow she knew it was also right.
Chapter 11
The afternoon passed by in a flash of cut-scene moments. She didn’t remember doing any actual work, and she hardly even remembered picking up her coat and awkwardly hobbling out of the office and onto the train home. That evening her husband offered to prepare the evening meal, pan-fried sea bass in a tarragon cream sauce.
“How was your day, dreamy head?” he asked as he sat next to her on the sofa.
“Oh, nothing special,” she said.
“Are you sure? You seem distracted.”
The question broke her out of her daydream. Could Philip read the guilt on her face. She was suddenly scared at the enormity of what she had been thinking. She was a faithful wife, a good wife. She had taken her vows with all sincerity, she had meant them and had every intention of keeping them. Of course she wasn’t going to have an affair with some strange man she had only just met. Or with any man for that matter, she silently added. Painfully conscious that she might be revealing too much of her emotions externally she offered the obvious excuse.
“I just tripped and hurt my ankle today.”
“I can see. I asked you about it when you came in, but you didn’t seem to hear me. Or anything else I’ve said to you this evening.”
“I’m sorry, love,” she said, leaning over and kissing him on the lips. “It’s just very painful. What with that and it being a mare of a day at work. I couldn’t seem to get anything done.” Well I’m not lying, she thought, and then felt a stab of guilt as she realized how she was already starting to strategize how she was going to conceal truth behind partial truths and omissions. But then again, there was nothing to tell Philip about anyway, even if she was being completely open. Not yet, she thought and then instantly mentally slapped herself for that treacherous contemplation.
“Never mind,” he said, returning her kiss. “Come and have your dinner and then we’ll put something on that ankle. Are you ok?” he asked suddenly concerned at how red she had just gone.
She turned away, struggling to control her emotions. “It’s nothing. You know. That time of the month. I’m just being silly. I hope you have some nice wine open for this. It smells delicious.”
They sat down to dinner, which was conducted in near silence. Philip seemed to be studying her particularly closely and it was beginning to annoy her, which made her feel even more guilty. Which annoyed her even more. She was just about to say something when he got up and started to clear the dishes away. When she started to rise to help out he said, “No, stay seated. Rest that poor ankle.”
When he had finished clearing away the dinner she had moved back to their sofa, her painfully swollen ankle raised up on a small mountain of cushions. He walked over with a pack of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel, this one was white she noticed, and carefully placed it on top of the ankle. Her tears emerged silently, hot, salty streams dampening her cheeks, the dam breaking as she struggled with her faithless thoughts. Philip sat down and put his arms around her. “Don’t worry,” he said. We all have days like that.”
That night in bed her husband hugged her tightly as they spooned. It took China a long time to get to sleep as her mind was turbulent with confused thoughts and battling emotions. She kept replaying the events of
the day, wondering if she should, or even could, have done anything different, spoken different words, looked at Mark in a different way. Maybe she should have forced herself to think about Philip more during her interaction with Mark. She certainly did not love Mark. She found him interesting, she supposed, she wanted to know more about his life, but that wasn’t even it. The simple fact was that she felt a basic, primal lust for him. For the first time in ages, since the early days of hers and Philip’s courtship, she really wanted, no needed, to have sex with someone. That was all. Every time she thought of Mark it wasn’t to wonder what he was feeling, what kind of family he had, or what kind of upbringing. When she thought of him she pictured him holding her, touching her everywhere, entering her, filling and fulfilling her.
She suspected part of the cause for these adulterous thoughts was the seed that her husband had planted in her mind with his silly but persistent cuckoldry fantasies. But she had to admit that despite this game of Philip’s having been present for most of their married life together she had never previously entertained the thought of being with anyone else. So there must be something different this time. Maybe this predilection to cheat had always been there in her and Mark just came along at the right point. A mad and depressing coincidence. Or maybe, more likely she thought, this could happen to anyone if they met someone with just the right look at just the right time in their lives. The latter reasoning comforted her slightly as she could believe the way she was feeling, the fantasy she was entertaining, wasn’t completely her fault. She was just a victim of hormones and circumstance. What she actually chose to do about the situation was now down to her, and no one else.
She cast her mind back to that moment of revelation earlier when she knew that she was going to have an affair with Mark. She wasn’t so sure now, as she lay wrapped snugly in Philip’s arms. The rational part of her brain was much better able to assimilate the consequences of any potential actions now she didn’t have Mark’s face mere inches from hers, holding her gaze with those inhumanly green eyes. And as she pictured that scene her resolve melted again and all she could think of was how she just wanted to lean forward and kiss him, push him back to the floor and literally ravage him. Warmth grew in her belly and she squirmed slightly, pressing her thighs together. Philip, half-asleep, pulled her in tighter and she felt the hardness of his erection pressed into the crease of her buttocks. She wriggled a little, settling his hard flesh deeper into that crevice, and imagined it was Mark behind her, pressed into her. She pressed her left hand between her thighs and pressed the ball of her thumb against herself, slowly rotating the hard knuckle through the material of her knickers.