Undone

by Kristina Lloyd

  He brought the glass to his lips and took a long sip. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘You can’t even taste the poison.’

  Now it was my turn to laugh.

  ‘You going to join me in one?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t usually when I’m working. Not until later, at any rate.’

  He looked around the empty bar. ‘This is working? Sign me up.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a bad influence.’ I tipped ice into a tumbler, gave it a swirl of chilled Dolin vermouth and glugged in a generous measure of Plymouth gin.

  ‘So how’ve you been?’ he asked as I stirred my ice and alcohol. ‘You heard anything from anyone?’

  ‘Not much, no.’ I took a martini glass from the freezer, checked it, and strained in my drink. ‘It’s weird. Friends have been phoning to ask what I know, who he was, who was his next of kin, and so on. But I can’t tell them much. He’d usually be in today. Wednesday, soon after five, week after week. And now, today, he’s not. Never will be again.’

  I pared off a twist of lemon and dropped it into my drink.

  ‘Yeah, I remembered you saying,’ he said. ‘That’s partly why I’m here. I’m working on site at the mall. New job this week. Thought I could stop by and help take your mind off things.’

  ‘Well, you did that all right.’ I raised my glass. ‘Cheers. If that’s not horribly inappropriate.’

  Sol lifted his glass and we clinked rims. ‘It’s what he would have wanted. To the memory of our Russian friend.’

  I took a sip of martini. My cheeks tingled at the taste, as cool and clean as Arctic moonlight.

  ‘You haven’t told anyone about…’ he began.

  ‘The three— No, not a soul. I never will.’

  He nodded in approval.

  ‘I still can’t quite believe all this,’ I went on. ‘It made the local papers, did you see? Initial post-mortem results said he probably drowned.’

  ‘Yeah, I think we’d figured that one out. Looks to be a late-night dip gone wrong. Never a good idea to go swimming when you’re drunk.’

  ‘Do you think he was alone?’ I asked.

  ‘Must have been.’ He looked me dead in the eye. ‘Or someone’s lying to the police.’

  I held his gaze, thinking of the damp towel in my en suite. I drank, the chill of gin turning to heat as it slid inside me.

  ‘I think we did the right thing.’

  Sol nodded. ‘We did. But I’ve been thinking … Well, call it a hunch but I don’t think this is as straightforward as it seems.’

  My heart speeded up. ‘Oh? How so?’

  ‘Just a feeling I have, a bad feeling. There was something not quite right about Misha. You know what I mean? Hardly anyone at the party seemed to know who he was.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Remind me again? You met, what was she called, Lou, through online dating? And she was a friend of Rose’s? And that was your main connection?’

  ‘Yeah, OK. But there’s a reason for that.’ He brought his drink to his lips, making me wait for his reason. The bar’s glow, weakened by daylight, cast a blue star on the circular base of his glass. His Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed. He set down his drink.

  ‘I’m new to the south-east,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a long-standing network of friends down here. Me and Lou, we wanted different things from a relationship. We stayed friends, I met friends of hers, I got invited to the party. That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘You’re quite guarded about your past.’

  ‘Am I?’ He looked genuinely perplexed and a touch wounded. ‘I don’t mean to be. Well, OK, perhaps I am. But it’s not a pleasant story. Hell, and certainly not one I’d want to regale folks with at a party.’

  ‘The party’s over,’ I said. ‘Big time. And I’m all ears.’

  He shook his head and gazed into his drink, fingers toying with the stem of the glass. ‘I had a messy break-up with a woman, that’s all. I needed to get far, far away. Start afresh. You mind if we hold off on this for a while? Things are dismal enough as it is.’

  ‘No pressure,’ I said. ‘I was just curious. Sounds similar to my situation so I can sympathise. Anyway, go on. Tell me about Misha and this hunch of yours.’

  ‘Ah, it’s just … I think he did have strong connections at the party but nobody wants to own up to it.’ He swirled his drink in his glass before raising his tired, dark eyes to mine. ‘I think it’s about sex. I think some people at that party are involved in something dubious, some weird kink, and he was part of it too.’

  ‘Weird how? Illegal stuff? Oh Christ, he wasn’t part of some paedo ring, was he? Please tell me he wasn’t.’

  ‘No, not kids. I’m not sure what. But I got the sense … it’s hard to nail but a sense there was something underground about some of the people at Dravendene.’

  ‘Underground?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

  ‘Secretive, dodgy. Not to be messed with.’

  ‘You sure you’re not misreading things?’ I said. ‘Some of Rose’s friends were sort of alternative and sub-cultural but I didn’t see anything sinister going on.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not that. Darker than that. I felt people had connections that weren’t being declared. Every now and then, I’d get this weird discomfort. A tension. As if people were afraid. You didn’t get that?’

  ‘No, not at all. What are you saying? You think Misha was bumped off?’

  ‘Not sure. I just think there’s more to this than meets the eye.’

  I wondered whether to tell him about the damp towel. I’d been assuming Sol had dumped it in the en suite and was implicated in Misha’s death. Or had at least been swimming with Misha. But maybe it was more complicated. Had a stranger entered my room to plant the towel when we were sleeping? Were they trying to set Sol up? Or was Sol now trying to throw me off the scent after realising I’d removed the towel without a word? I’d brought the towel home with me but it was of no use as evidence. I’d bundled it into the washing machine as soon as I could, eager to erase all traces of our lie. I’d washed and polished my items of kit too, ensuring no fingerprints remained. The threesome never happened. That was the story and that’s what I had to tell myself.

  ‘Will you do me a favour?’ asked Sol.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Weekend after next, there’s a big fetish night in Brighton. Will you come with me?’

  I gave a half-laugh of surprise. ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Bit of both. I reckon it’s the kind of event Misha would have attended. I just want to snoop around a little, see if anyone knew him, that kind of thing.’

  I shook my head. ‘Why, Sol? He’s dead. Can’t we just leave him in peace?’

  ‘Maybe it’s guilt, I don’t know. But I feel we owe it to him. If something’s amiss about his death, it needs to be exposed.’

  ‘If you suspect something, you should go to the police.’

  ‘But I don’t have anything, just this bad feeling. Plus, we’ve already lied to them. I’d rather leave it there and keep my distance. If I get something more concrete then, yeah, I’ll need to reconsider. But until then…’ He arched his brows in question.

  ‘A fetish night?’

  ‘Uh huh. Called Club Sybaris.’

  ‘In Brighton?’

  He nodded. ‘We could stay at my place but it’s kinda poky so I’ll book us a hotel. I figured we could go along as experienced players. We’re new in town, we’ve been living in New Jersey up until recently and—’

  ‘But I don’t know the first thing about New Jersey!’

  ‘I do. And you’d be playing the role of my submissive so maybe you only speak when I give you permission.’

  I laughed, finding the notion absurd. ‘Jeez, Sol. If you want to walk me around on a leash, just ask. No need to cook up these convoluted amateur-detective scenarios.’

  ‘So is that a yes?’

  He reached out across the bar for my wrist, clasping me
in a pinch of his hand. We froze for a moment on opposite sides of the counter, elbow to elbow as if engaged in an awkward arm wrestle. The possessive threat in the gesture aroused me. I adore having my wrists held. The bones are narrow and the skin on the underside is parchment thin. When a man holds me there, I feel he’s found my weakest spot and has all the advantages. Sol squeezed harder, his thumb pressing into the delicate network of veins below the heel of my hand. Did he know what he was doing? Was he close to a pressure point that could knock me out or kill me? I imagined he was the kind of guy who knew about these things.

  ‘Be mine,’ he said, his tone deadly serious.

  His thumb on my wrist moved in tender swirls, his gentleness even more possessive than his force. My groin thumped in response. His manner suggested this was about more than bluffing the part to inveigle our way into meeting scene players. He meant it. He might be using our conspiracy to cloak his sincerity but he meant it. He wanted me in that role.

  I’ve always regarded myself as a woman with kinky fantasies who likes to act powerless in a sexual domain. I’d never wanted to relinquish control to a man for more than the time it took to get off.

  For the first time, I began to appreciate that playing beyond the bedroom simply made the bedroom bigger. I knew Sol would push me into dark places if I let him. He would blur the division that tried to keep sex separate, that tried to make it an activity which took place behind the safety of closed doors. When eroticism floods your veins and permeates your everyday, it’s dangerous.

  Be mine.

  The words made me tingle. I wanted to be his, to feel both safe and afraid as he called the shots. Yet at the same time, I found the prospect horrifying. Having a fist in my hair and being roughly fucked was one thing. Being controlled, owned and protected was something else entirely. The prospect of him caring for me was the scariest of all. I could imagine him pushing me to my limits, breaking me down, and in the aftermath I’d become soppy and needy for him. I didn’t want to be weak like that, didn’t want to depend on a man to restore me back to wholeness.

  When I spoke, my voice was a tremulous breath. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll be yours. But for one night only.’

  He let his fingers slide gently down my arm. Sensation fluttered and throbbed in my groin.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said softly. He traced a single finger upwards to my wrist and drifted patterns over the skin where the pressure of his grip still lingered. ‘One night only.’ He smiled at me, his brown eyes level and calculating. ‘I’ll try not to abuse my power.’

  Part 3

  Monday 7th July

  I’ve started to fear I might drown when I’m swimming. Before Misha died, I used to swim thirty lengths each morning at Saltbourne’s municipal baths without a care in the world. I don’t bother with private gym memberships because all I want to do is swim. I’m proud to say I haven’t missed a day since Dravendene, although my first return to the pool troubled me greatly. When I pushed away from the edge and put my face in the water, I thought about him dying, about how it might feel to have liquid filling your lungs, crushing you from the inside.

  I panicked. I had to stop and stand so I could put my feet on the bottom. I needed to reassure myself the depths weren’t fathomless. I waded back to the poolside, acutely aware of the muffled echoes of other people around me. I’m a good swimmer, I reassured myself. I swim front crawl and have always loved the water. I can’t run to save my life and most forms of exercise bore me. But I slice through the water, smooth and controlled, very low on splash. Every third stroke, I twist my head to breathe. After a few lengths, I’m slipping into a meditative state, going back and forth, relishing the roll of my shoulders and the watery blue world visible through my goggles.

  But last week, I clutched the tiled edge, taking long, steady breaths. Supposing that blue world were the last thing I saw? Heaving, coughing, unable to rise. Bubbles whirling like a snowstorm until all the bubbles were gone.

  ‘Just one length,’ I’d told myself. And I kept telling myself that – just one length – until I’d hit my requisite thirty and my mind was quietened. On the day after that, trying to fight the fear and prove I wasn’t cowed, I swam thirty-two lengths. The day after, it was thirty-four.

  Today, for the first time, I swam forty. It’s a nice round number, and almost my age. From now on, this is what I will swim each day. I’ll be stronger, fitter and more disciplined than I was before Misha drowned.

  I won’t go under with him. I won’t.

  Tuesday 8th July

  Sol Miller. Solomon. A good Old Testament name, he’d said. I googled him, of course, but too many others shared the same name and I couldn’t find him among them.

  He’d opened up to me about his past though, despite saying he’d rather hold off. On that Wednesday at the bar last week, he stayed for a second drink when Raphael turned up for his six o’clock shift. We talked on the cast-iron balcony, the wings of the blue-green stained-glass doors gleaming in the high evening light. Sol gleamed too, the sheen on his brow catching the July warmth as he sat at the dainty table in his workman’s gear, big, grubby and vital. The afternoon clouds had lifted. How apt, I thought. Sol turns up and the sun comes out. I was grateful for company from someone who knew the situation. I didn’t want to be alone with thoughts of Misha and death, nor did I want to explain my mood to anyone.

  Sol told me that his parents – his mother from London, his father from New Jersey – were killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver when he was eight years old and an only child. Mom and Dad had met as students in the early 70s, working as Kibbutz volunteers in Israel. They’d fallen in love; then had married and settled in South Jersey. Sol had dual nationality. After his folks died, he was raised by his father’s sister and family in Queens, New York, but spent every summer vacationing with his mother’s mother, being seriously fucking miserable in Hendon, north of London. His adoptive American parents separated when he was in his late teens and a few years later his adoptive mother died of cancer.

  ‘I’ve always felt kinda rootless,’ he said, taking a cigarette. ‘The curse of my people, doomed to wander.’

  ‘Do you still have family back in the States?’

  He nodded, cupping a hand around the flame of his lighter, and inhaled. He glanced away towards Saltbourne’s jumble of lichen-coated rooftops and its pink and gold Oriental domes. This place is such an odd mixture of magical and mundane. Like life, I guess.

  ‘I’ve got family of sorts.’ He released a stream of smoke. ‘Two sisters and their kids. Well, my adoptive sisters. Cousins by blood. We’re still in touch, still close in some ways. We have some distant relatives in Philly on my father’s side. I don’t have much to do with David, my adoptive father. It’s a long story. Short version: he’s a cunt.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I was living with a woman, Helena, in Manhattan, Lower East Side. We split. Shit got ugly. I left town. Well, I left the continent, to be accurate. Came back to Hendon, my second home, partly because my grandmom was getting frail and I wanted to spend time with her before she died. I needed to take a career break too. I was working in IT, like everyone. Data analysis. Half killing myself for a digital marketing company. They described themselves as “bleeding edge”. Total nightmare. So I was feeling burned out. Needed a change of scene. Anyway, my grandma passed after I’d been here about a week. Sometimes, I swear I’m cursed.’

  ‘Jeez, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You poor man.’

  ‘Remember my tattoo?’ He reached around himself and touched his T-shirt under his arm, brushing down his ribs. ‘Every seed head represents someone or something I’ve lost. Even Martha, the family dog, is on there.’

  My heart ached for him. ‘Show me,’ I said gently.

  He rested his cigarette in the ashtray and crossed his arms, grabbing the hem of his T-shirt. I caught a glimpse of his lean, dark-honey torso; then he halted, casting me a sidelong glance. His shoulders dropped and that cheeky, dirty grin curl
ed on his lips.

  ‘You’re just trying to get me to strip, aren’t you, Cha Cha?’

  I laughed. ‘Would I do a thing like that?’

  ‘I figure you would.’

  ‘So go on then.’

  ‘Promise you’re not going to throw me off the premises?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  He whipped off his tee and draped the garment, still crumpled, over the arm of an empty chair. His beauty made me catch my breath. His musky, salty sweat drifted on the air. My groin thrummed with longing. He retrieved his cigarette, twisting fractionally as he did so to display the panel of his delicate, botanical tattoo. Dark hair flared in his armpit. Several inches below that was the inked image of a fluffy dandelion clock, its stem curving down his ribs to his waist. The seed heads floated away towards his chest, finely etched pictures of tiny parachutes drifting and twirling. Scattered among the seed heads were single strands of Sol’s own body hair. It seemed as if he were physically emerging into the panel, his hairs becoming wisps of wind-blown meadow grass.

  ‘That’s a lot of death,’ I murmured. Instinctively, I reached out, as if touching this representation of loss could soothe his pain. I stroked from one feathery seed head to the next and he kept still, allowing me to explore his personal history as embedded in his body. Smoke trickled up from the cigarette in his hand. A car horn honked in a distant street below. His skin was smooth and warm under my fingertips. The cage of his ribs lifted and fell with his breath. Two of the seed heads overlapped, their filaments connecting in a criss-cross patch. I lingered there, circling around the image without touching it.

  ‘My folks,’ he said.

  I exhaled softly, stumped for words. I sat back in my chair and so did he, still shirtless. His dark chest hair glinted in the sunlight, and his lean stomach folded in small creases above his worn, low-slung jeans. The hair across his belly thickened at the centre, running like a seam towards his groin.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For sharing.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘Not something I do easily.’