Across my knees, the briefcase lay squat as a toad as I considered Gabriel’s answer.
Finn
‘Oh yeah, that’s good, God, you’re a dirty, dirty bastard, just hold it there...’
I didn’t have a lot of choice about holding anything anywhere, but at least getting fucked against the dining table meant there was less chance of my leg giving way under me, and what Gary lacked in technique he certainly made up for in enthusiasm.
His fingers dug hard into my hips as he hammered his well-lubed cock into me, bringing himself off with a series of child-like squeaks. I concentrated on relaxing my abdomen, granting him easier passage and –hopefully – making it feel a little less like I’d been attacked with a pile-driver the next morning. After what seemed like aeons I felt him shove his way even further in than I would have thought possible, so that his balls slammed against me, and he shot his load into me with a loud cry. Sweat from his forehead spattered onto my bare back, where he had shoved my shirt up for easier access. As he pulled out I winced as my stomach gave its customary involuntary spasm.
I silently pulled my jeans back up from around my ankles and clenched my arse to stop the grubby little fucker’s cum from leaking out before I could rip my clothes off and fling them into a boil wash, and preferably before I had the added humiliation of Henry collecting my dirty laundry. I hated bareback fucking, even though Blaine demanded proof from each of her clients that they were negative before they set foot on the island – I already knew I’d be spending the best part of an hour scouring away at my skin to rid myself of every trace of this bastard’s assorted bodily fluids.
‘Er...’ Gary mumbled.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said as I fastened my fly. ‘This didn’t happen.’
‘Good. Thanks. This isn’t something people know about. I mean, it’s not like I’m not into birds, but every now and again, it’s good to have a bit of a change. It’s not like I’m permanently transferring to the other team.’ He chuckled at his own wit and I pictured the fire-poker embedded in his left temple. ‘It’s cool to come somewhere I can be myself, to be honest. Cost a bloody fortune, but worth every penny.’
I lit up a cigarette and Gary shook his head. ‘Those things’ll kill you.’
‘Not fucking quickly enough,’
Gary looked confused. ‘Right, better get back to Kayleigh. You know what birds are like if you leave ‘em too long. Well, maybe you don’t... Anyway...’
‘Right.’
Gary reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty-pound note and folded it into my palm.
I waited until I could no longer hear his footsteps then threw my performance-related bonus onto the fire. It flared bright blue, the colour of Lilith’s eyes, before vanishing in the flames.
Lilith
Gabriel stood in the centre of the stage, swathed in dry-ice and adoration. He raised a hand to the crowds and appealed for silence. ‘For those of you who’ve been wonderin’,’ he announced in an accent that now made him sound like the Artful Dodger, ‘I reckon it’s time I put you out of your misery, yeah?’ He laughed in delight as the audience roared its approval. ‘So yeah, this is about a friend of mine, and yeah, she’s here tonight.’
Three thousand pairs of eyes turned to stare at me. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I groaned, as I slid down my seat and tried to disguise myself against the tablecloth.
I had expected Gabriel to simply stand at a microphone, but to my surprise he walked over to a specially placed grand piano and pulled up the stool. ‘Lilith Bresson, this one’s for you.’ He effortlessly played a breathtaking, almost classical, sequence of chords. I honestly hadn’t expected him to be this good.
‘Almost an angel,
You took me to heaven on a scheduled flight.
Almost an angel,
Then you broke my heart in two like a creature of the night...’
It was a clever, funny, song that revealed the talent behind the manufactured glamour. Jay and Al sat rapt, proud aunts at a junior piano recital, and I saw the love they had for their charge. I envied him.
‘...Warm, sweet lips and ice-cold kisses
Sucked out my soul and left me wanting more.
Pick up your mail, answer your phone,
Answer my texts, I’m so sick of being alone.
Spread your wings and fly my way,
Be the devil I know for a heavenly day.’
A final skilled flourish on the piano, and the song was finished. Applause thundered around the room, and mine joined it. Gabriel took his bow, and I could see him scouring the audience for my face, looking for my reaction like a tournament knight appealing to his lady. When he caught sight of me standing and clapping, his grin widened and he blew handfuls of kisses in my direction. He leapt from the stage and landed on the first table, to cheers of encouragement from the crowd.
The tables that separated Gabriel from me became stepping stones and he jumped from one to the other, lithe and agile and high on life itself, until he was back at his own seat. He lifted me off my feet, swung me around and kissed me full on the lips and still the applause didn’t stop. Every red-top in the country had its cover story for the next day.
‘So, what we doin’ to celebrate then, sexy?’ Gabriel asked, between mouthfuls from his champagne bottle. He offered me a drink, but I shook my head.
‘Driving, later,’ I explained.
Gabriel’s whole face crumpled. ‘You’re kidding me!’
‘I’ve got somewhere I have to be.’
‘A somewhere, or a someone?’ he asked, with a real edge of hurt to his voice.
I said nothing, and Gabriel put the bottle down. ‘This is something to do with you havin’ a face like fuck earlier, isn’t it?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Anything I can do?’
It was a genuine offer, and for an intensely pleasurable second I envisaged Jay and Al dismembering Coyle in a lively game of tug o’ war, then I looked at Gabriel’s eager, pretty face and suddenly realised exactly what he could do for me, and felt the adrenaline charge around my system and chase away the impotence that had smothered me in these recent weeks. I had to act now, before any thought of repercussion or consequence bit at my heels. I linked my fingers behind Gabriel’s neck, and he gave the smile of a man who knew his luck was in.
‘I take it that’s a ‘yes’?’ he asked.
I gave him a secretive smile in return and kissed his nose. ‘Not here. Five minutes. Meet me in the ladies’, third cubicle down. I’ll tell you more then.’
Chapter Twenty One
Finn
As soon as Blaine left for the airport in the early hours of the morning, Coyle installed himself as Lord Albermarle. He came back on the launch with Henry, bringing with him three bottles of Irish whiskey, five hardcore jazz mags, a gram of coke and a smug bastard grin that heralded trouble.
I had spent two long hours unsuccessfully chasing sleep, and was skilfully combining lethal doses of caffeine and nicotine in the kitchen when the smirking bastard imposed his company on me.
‘Now then, fag – good night, was it? Gobble enough cock to keep you smiling?’ As Henry washed up and did his best to become invisible Coyle pulled up a chair, spinning it so that the back faced me and he could straddle the seat in a perfect display of macho posturing. He took a cigarette from my open packet before asking, ‘She back?’
I took the packet back and lit my twelfth smoke of that shiny new morning. ‘Not yet.’
‘’Yet’?’ Coyle snorted with amusement. ‘Fuck me, you’re sittin’ here waiting for that prick-teasing bitch to come running back to your side like your ugly mutt there?’ He nodded at Bran before leaning back and blowing a smoke ring into the air. ‘Anyway, enough of the small talk. Got a wee present for you - hot off the press,’ he smirked. ‘Called into the newsagent’s to pick up my fags, and look who I found starin’ up at me from the front page?’ He threw that day’s copy of The Herald across the table. ‘Take a look at that, faggot. Then tell me she’s co
min’ back to you.’
Against every instinct, I looked. ‘NICE PUPPIES, LILITH!!!’ the headline screamed, and there she was on the front page, wearing the sweater she’d managed to pick up from the hospital and nothing much else, glued to the side of some infant Adonis and caught in the glare of a hundred camera flashes as they made a dash from the doorway of a nightclub.
He was holding Lilith like a man would, if she were his. One tanned, flawless arm was curled around her shoulder, protecting her from the hordes but also undoubtedly claiming her as his own.
For all her arguments, this was where she belonged. She fitted into that world like a jigsaw piece and in that boy, with his perfect white teeth and stylist-tousled hair, she had her perfect man.
‘Finn, don’t look at that rubbish.’ Henry tried to take the paper from my hands.
‘Fuck off,’ I snapped, and snatched it back from him. I began to read.
‘Wild child of the British art world Lilith Bresson was up to her usual antics at last night’s upmarket Helicon Awards Ceremony, held at Neon, the celeb world’s fave Mayfair club.
Lilith, 28, enjoyed a passionate reunion with her toyboy lover and singer of the moment 21-year-old Gabriel James after he confirmed rumours that his smash hit ‘Almost an Angel’ was written for the controversial winner of ‘European Artist of the Year’. The two have already shared a First Class romp back in June on a flight from Alicante to Heathrow.
Back then The Herald reported how passengers were left shocked as Lilith and Gabriel had a drunken intimate adventure under a skimpy airline blanket, oblivious to the families – many with toddlers – sitting just feet away.
Stunned observers at last night’s ceremony witnessed Gabriel and a bizarrely dressed Lilith: embrace for the first time since their raunchy flight; share an X-rated kiss after the hunky singer finished the performance of Almost an Angel that he dedicated to his lover; dive into a single cubicle in the ladies’ toilets, only to reappear twenty minutes later, looking flushed and breathless.
A fellow guest said, ‘They couldn’t keep their hands off each other – Lilith didn’t even wait to say thanks for her prize before she was back in Gabriel’s arms.’
The loved-up pair left the club arm-in-arm and unwilling to talk to our reporter, and sped to Gabriel’s luxury Chelsea pad where Lilith spent the night.
This was the shocking artist’s first public appearance since her live-on-air brawl with Herald columnist and people’s favourite, Johnny Buckle. Neither Lilith nor her agent has ever denied that she checked herself into rehab just weeks after her unprovoked attack.
Time will tell if Gabriel becomes a full-time squeeze for the exhibitionist painter, or just another notch on an impressive bedpost that includes A.C Torino’s star striker Alessandro Bertolli, actor Ben Bateman, and the bi-curious chick-lit writer Carina McGuire.’
‘Tell you what, Finn-boy – you look like you’ve been smacked right in the face!’ Coyle leered. ‘You reckon she’s really goin’ to haul her skinny arse all the way back here for some sorry little spunk-collector when she’s got that to give her a good pokin’?’
‘Finn, don’t let him...’ Henry began, but before Coyle could even start on his next taunt I threw the paper across the kitchen and staggered from the room.
*****
I sat on the floor of the greenhouse with my knees pulled close to my chest. I dragged hard on my thirteenth cigarette of the day, listening to the faint crackle of tobacco and paper as it burned down. I knew exactly when I needed to stop.
Bran, dozing in a pool of glass-filtered sunlight, lazily opened one eye as I pulled up the left sleeve of my hoodie, then settled back to sleep as I turned my arm to inspect the expanse of pale skin between my wrist and the crook of my elbow. There was a time when I would have struggled to find a clean site, but now there was only this sorry scattering of tiny white dents. You could feel the slight raise of scar tissue if you ran a light finger down my arm, but it was one of the places on my body where clients didn’t linger. Anyhow, I healed well.
Ironically, it was Blaine who had broken this habit. The collection of raw, bloody craters that had spread up my arms and across the backs of my hands when we first met was not, she had coldly informed me, in keeping with the image of Albermarle Hall.
So until today’s forthcoming lapse I had stopped the thing with the cigarettes and put my energy into the thing with the temazepam instead. I was still fucked, but only on the inside now, and that was far less likely to put a client off.
Inside my head on an endless loop Lilith turned to Gabriel and kissed him hard and laughed at her lucky escape, and I gave one last drag on my cigarette until the tip glowed and then I ground it hard into my skin at a point exactly halfway between wrist and elbow. Lilith and Gabriel disappeared as the pain surged bright and welcome into the space they had occupied. I sighed with the closest thing to pleasure I could feel, and Bran wrinkled her nose in her sleep as the slightest scent of burnt flesh drifted over to where she lay.
*****
I spent the rest of that bitter, grey day in the greenhouse, hiding out with a first edition Solzhenitsyn that I’d sneaked out of Blaine’s library until the last of the light faded from the horizon and I could no longer keep the autumn damp from seeping deep into my core. I still wasn’t hungry, but needed a gallon or so of tea to begin to thaw me out. I also needed to scrounge a couple of paracetamol to take the sting out of my latest branding.
The kitchen was deserted. Coyle, already drunk for all Ireland, had retired to the biggest suite in the hall where he would spend the rest of his time keeping a dozen cartels in business and wanking himself blind, unless I did something stupid that summoned him out of his lair so that he could kick my head in for sport. I had no idea where Henry was, and Lilith was still nowhere to be seen. I filled the kettle and set it on the stove, slamming it around as though the cacophony could drive away the memory of her sitting, neat and beautiful, at the same table where that bloody newspaper now mocked me.
I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and winced as the fabric pulled away the top layer of my cigarette burn. I reckoned Henry must have a box of Band-Aids somewhere in his meticulously arranged drawers, and began to rifle through them.
‘You know, you could just ask nicely and I’d find whatever it is you’re looking for.’ Henry removed his rain-spattered waxed jacket and draped it over a hook on the back of the door. He began to follow me around the kitchen, replacing the items I’d scattered over the floor and pushing the drawers back in. ‘So?’
‘So, what?’
‘What are you looking for? Or are you just destroying my kitchen for the amusement value?’
‘Band-Aid.’ I didn’t look up from my search. I knew I was sending Henry’s blood pressure sky-high as I scattered his collections of arranged-by-size elastic bands and date-ordered discount vouchers, but it was the nearest thing I was going to get to a laugh that day.
Henry’s face immediately creased with concern, despite the fact I was destroying his universe. ‘What for? Have you hurt yourself?’
‘For this, all right?’ I spat, and showed him the burn that was now a weeping, angry red disc.
Henry didn’t say anything to that. He simply went to the right drawer and handed me the box.
I didn’t bother with thanks. ‘Where the hell were you, anyway?’
‘Well I was hardly going to swim back to the bloody island, was I?’ Lilith said from the doorway. She was still wearing her outfit from the night before.
‘So. How was your trip?’ I didn’t even try to keep the resentment from my voice.
‘Expensive.’
‘Yeah, I can imagine. What was it? A magnum of champagne and a pack of three for your fuckfest with Gabriel bastard James?’
‘Finn!’ Henry snapped. ‘I’m so sorry, Lilith. Coyle’s been in, winding Finn up with that.’ He pointed to the newspaper as though it were radioactive waste.
‘Fuck off and die, Henry.’ I was behaving li
ke a twat again, and I didn’t care. The fact that Lilith, who had just had her best opportunity to disappear yet had chosen to return to this madhouse, meant less to me than the front page of The Herald.
‘Ah. I didn’t plan on you reading that,’ Lilith said.
‘No, I bet you fucking didn’t.’
Lilith ignored me and picked up the paper. She stood and slowly read that bloody article from beginning to end, an infuriating smile flickering across her lips as she took in the most amusing details. Finally she folded the pages perfectly in half and dropped it in the bin. ‘Well that worked.’
‘What did? Sorting out your next shag for when you’re done here?’
‘No. My impromptu attempt at misdirection.’ She pulled an elastic band from her ponytail and shook her hair free. It hung in damp strands across her face and I finally realised just how exhausted she looked. Then I thought about what had caused that exhaustion and my anger sparked once more.
‘Don’t play with me, Lilith.’ I tried to barge past her. She caught me by the shoulder.
‘Finn, the most I did with Gabriel was drink forty cups of coffee so I could get back to Albermarle before my curfew.’
‘Yeah, right.’ I pulled my arm away but didn’t move from the spot.
‘You were about to tell us how the trip went, Lilith,’ Henry chimed, desperate to break the storm that was building in his sacred space. He ignored my glare and began to brew the tea that I had started half an hour earlier.
‘Like I said, expensive,’ Lilith reiterated. ‘And I’ll tell you why, shall I?’ she asked pleasantly. ‘No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway.’ She pulled an overnight bag from where she had dropped it in the doorway and threw two packages across the table. ‘Twenty pounds on presents for my favourite boys.’
Henry got a baseball cap decorated with a flashing Tower Bridge. I got a t-shirt that read ‘My friend went to London, and all I got was this fucking t-shirt.’
‘Another twenty for enough speed to let me drive three hundred miles nonstop without falling asleep at the wheel,’ Lilith continued. This shocked me. Lilith was the second straightest person I knew after Henry – God knew what she’d been up to for her to end up scoring a bag of street phet. She pulled her hair back into its ponytail and looked me straight in the eye. ‘And thirty eight thousand in used notes to buy a thirteen-year old rent boy from Blaine’s London brothel.’
The Tied Man Page 26