The Things We Hide at Home

by Nem Rowan

  I stared, astonished by what I was hearing. When I didn’t move, he rose from his chair and sidled past me so he could open the office door.

  “Get out,” he repeated.

  Biting my tongue, I slowly pushed out of the chair and did as he wanted, swinging my backpack onto my shoulder and zipping up my coat. The second I was over the threshold, he slammed the door behind me, the surface of it bumping against my bag and jolting me forward. I didn’t know what to do now except hand in my card and leave.

  The receptionist smiled apologetically as I gave it to her, telling me to have a nice day as I turned to go but I said nothing in return. I avoided passing by the café on my way out; there was no way I could face talking to Leanne or Frank at that moment. I would put my uniform in a jiffy bag and mail it to them because I had no intention of ever stepping foot in there again.

  After unlocking the car, I collapsed into the driver’s seat. For a long while, I simply sat there, staring at the multi-coloured vehicles of visitors moving in and out of the car-park, my face emotionless and my heart still beating rapidly with adrenaline. Maybe I could have handled that meeting better. Then again, it seemed he had already made up his mind before I’d even entered the office. Even if I’d kissed his ass, he still would have thrown the sack at me. Worst of all, he’d implied that I had “problems.”

  Sighing, I turned on the engine and strapped in, deciding I’d go home and wait for the police to arrive. I didn’t much feel like explaining everything to Vanessa. A couple of hours of solitude would give me time to cool off.

  * * * *

  The Oubliette Club was packed to the rafters. A charity ball was being held by one of the club’s patrons, so naturally, everyone who usually visited on different days of the week had all arrived to blow their cash on the benefit raffle draw and drain the bar of its every cask. Neither Vanessa nor I had thought to check the calendar before we arrived, both of us several degrees under-dressed for the occasion and astonished by the queue waiting to enter the establishment, so we turned around and headed back in the direction we had come. There were a few other clubs we could go to where we could get some booze and dance, but we had intended to go to the lounge and chat and none of those places would be ideal.

  As we walked along the street, a group of young men wolf-whistled at Vanessa, who strode alongside me in heels and a short PVC dress, but she completely ignored them, forcing them to move aside to allow us to pass. It was chilly and the night was damp and gloomy, the occasional spit of rain in the air. We opted for an Italian bistro on the city centre, simply because it was open, had plenty of available tables, and would get us indoors before it started to rain harder.

  The waiter looked us up and down when we walked in, but was polite enough not to say anything, and instead, he took us to a table near the back where the heat of the open kitchen warmed the air. A chef was flambéing something in a pan and the scent of garlic and onion made my belly rumble.

  “Can we have the drinks menu please?” Vanessa asked as she seated herself, preventing the waiter from handing her the food menu.

  “Actually, I’ll have that menu. I’m feeling kind of hungry,” I interjected, further confusing the poor man who likely didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

  “You’re hungry again? But we ate like two hours ago.” She smirked at me as I opened the menu on the tabletop.

  “Exactly, two hours ago and I’m hungry again.” I chuckled, pausing to struggle out of my jacket before hanging it on the back of my chair.

  “The drinks menu for you, madam,” the waiter spoke as he returned and offered it for her.

  “Thank you,” she replied, taking a pair of spectacles from her handbag and placing them on the bridge of her nose so she could examine the contents.

  She ordered a cocktail and a cider for me, and I ordered a garlic baguette, and after the waiter had brought our drinks, we waited for my food to arrive. It was only when the waiter had left us alone that we relaxed.

  “So, tell me about what the police said,” Vanessa prompted, stirring her straw around in her glass.

  I sighed, taking a sip of ice-cold cider and enjoying the chill it left in my throat as I swallowed. “Well, they looked at the hole in the fence and agreed that it was intentional. They checked out the area behind the house. They said they couldn’t pinpoint from which direction the trespasser came because the woods connect with the cemetery and it’s enormous.”

  “Is that all? Didn’t they offer you any help?”

  “Help? They told me everything you already told me to do and said they would try to find my stalker, but to be honest, because I don’t know who it is, there’s not a lot they can do right now.” I took a breadstick out of the basket between us and snapped off the end in my mouth. I chewed before I spoke again. “At least Willy helped me nail some wood over the hole to block it up.”

  “And what about your job? What are you gonna do now?” she inquired, then sucked some of her cocktail up the straw.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I called Yolonda. She said she doesn’t mind if you’re late paying the rent.”

  Instead of that lifting my mood, it reminded me that money was going to be tight fairly soon. “Thanks…I’ve been meaning to speak to her about moving, actually.” I sank back in my chair and rested my elbows on the table’s edge, only lifting my hand to bite off more breadstick.

  “Oh?”

  “Well, this whole thing with the stalker has made me think about downsizing. Do you know if she’s got any apartments around?” I asked after I had chewed and swallowed.

  “Yeah, I think she does. I’ll ask her.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She could tell I was stressing out. She observed me for a minute, watching as I finished the breadstick and took up another one, her smile softening and becoming more upbeat. “Well, Tenny, I was thinking, why don’t you go professional?”

  The breadstick crunched as I bit into it, several crumbs landing on my sleeve, so I swiped them off. “Professional? But I haven’t got any qualifications. I’ve got like…four GCSEs. And two of those are C grades.”

  “No, you wally. I mean a professional Dom.” She giggled, wiggling her eyebrows at me.

  “One garlic baguette.” The waiter alarmed me as I hadn’t heard him approach from behind and he appeared to be listening in on our conversation. He placed my plate in front of me and my belly clenched in anticipation. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No thanks, we’re good.” Vanessa flashed him a charming smile and he nodded, turning to go and see to another table. As soon as he was six feet away, she leaned across the table and loudly uttered, “So, Tenny, what do you think about ANAL FISTING?”

  The waiter glanced at us over his shoulder with an astonished look in his wide eyes. This seemed to amuse Vanessa greatly because she sniggered and sank back in her seat while I continued to grin at her. She sipped from her cocktail before licking her plump lips.

  “Nosy bugger. Well, what do you think, then?”

  “I don’t know if I’m confident enough to be a professional,” I admitted awkwardly, guessing that she probably wasn’t referring to anal fisting. I started to tuck into my baguette and she continued to stir her cocktail, clearly deep in thought.

  “You can work from my house and I’ll help you build a customer base,” she eventually murmured, sounding more as though she was contemplating out loud.

  “But what about David?” I asked as I lifted my cider glass to take another sip.

  “What about him?”

  “Well, I don’t know how he’d feel about it if I chose to go professional,” I explained, already aware that she was silently forming her response.

  “Just because you’d be seeing a few different subs doesn’t mean you’ll have to stop seeing him. Willy and I are just as close as we were when we first married. I mean, Jake was married with kids and that didn’t cause you any problems.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?
” She made another giggle, this one more mischievous.

  “We weren’t an item, we were just playmates.”

  She continued to smirk at me.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Anyway, David is much more than Jake was, he’s more like my…my boyfriend,” I hesitated to say the word, but it was true. The relationship developing between David and I was very different to what I had shared with Jake.

  “Oh, he’s your boyfriend now?” she teased, her smirk turning into a broad grin that showed her bright white teeth. “When did that little development take place?”

  “I don’t know, it wasn’t some formalised affair. I just know I’m in love with him and I worry that if I went professional, he might get jealous or it might drive a wedge between us. We’ve barely been together a week and I don’t know if the relationship is strong enough to test it yet.” I took another bite of food and she waited as if expecting me to say more, but I didn’t.

  “Okay, fair point,” she eventually agreed.

  Ping.

  “Was that my phone or yours?” She looked down at her handbag resting on the floor between her heels.

  “It was mine. Just ignore it.” I shrugged. “Listen, maybe I can talk to him about it. If it wasn’t for him, I would have said ‘yes’ right away.”

  “So talk to him about it. Call him now and ask.”

  I made a scoffing laugh. “Really?”

  “Yeah, ask him. Or let me ask him. Come on, I’m offering you an opportunity I’ve never offered anyone before, and believe me, I’ve had a lot of people ask. You’re my friend, my little brother, and I’m trying to help you,” she persisted, tilting her head and causing the lamplight to flash off the rims of her hoop earrings.

  “Alright. Alright.” I sighed, wiping my mouth with a napkin and reaching into my pocket for my phone. When I unlocked the screen, I discovered a number of notifications waiting for me, but the strangest one of all was the most recent.

  CordialSin is nearby.

  “Oh. That’s weird,” I mumbled, frowning.

  “What? What’s weird?” Vanessa questioned as I turned in my seat and looked around the restaurant.

  A few more tables had become occupied since we had been served, some clustered with several people, all of them chatting and enjoying their food and drinks, but none of them were David. I looked at my phone again. The message had come less than a minute ago; that meant David must have been here less than a minute ago. There was no way he could come into the bistro without being noticed; Vanessa was directly facing the door and she would have recognised him.

  “My phone says David was here, but…” I looked at the rest of the diners one more time. “But I can’t see him.”

  “How would he know we had come here?” She frowned confusedly and leaned to the side so she could look around, too. “And why would he follow you here anyway? Are you sure it’s not just something gone wrong with your phone?”

  “I’m not sure. It did something weird at work as well and I thought he was there but he wasn’t.” I double-checked my phone just to be sure I hadn’t misread it.

  “Why don’t you call him now? Find out.”

  “You’re right, good idea,” I agreed, making the call. I put my phone to my ear but focused with the other one in case a phone started to ring nearby. Vanessa sat silently, glancing this way and that as she waited to see if anyone would reach for their pocket. The call cut off, though, and I looked at the screen. “I’ve got bad signal.”

  “Try calling outside.”

  I got up, weaving between the other tables until I reached the entrance, the waiters turning to watch me go and looking back to check that Vanessa was still seated. I stepped into the moist night air, finding at last that I had full signal and making the call again.

  The ring-tone began to repeat and I waited, and waited. The rain was falling in tiny specks, the wind creating small whirlwinds with the droplets as it gusted along the street. Movement nearby caught my eye and I turned to the left, catching sight of a figure fleeing from a shop doorway and darting ‘round the corner into a nearby alleyway. He’d moved so fast, I didn’t catch a glimpse of his face, and with his back to me, the hood of his scarlet jumper had completely obscured his head. The call was still ringing but David hadn’t answered.

  Feeling rather unsettled, I ended it and crept to the alleyway, peering ‘round the corner of the building to find the narrow lane empty. The sight of the red hoodie caused a flash of memory to rise to the forefront of my mind, a memory of David slipping off his raincoat to reveal a similar garment beneath, the front of it wet with rain, his sleeves pulled down over his hands.

  No, surely not. Surely it was a coincidence. Why would he follow me here? Did he think I was seeing other people, cheating on him? Was he secretly a very jealous person? But he didn’t seem that way at all. Maybe I was wrong.

  The unnerving sensation in my belly banished my hunger and left me feeling nauseous. When I opened the door to the bistro, the heat from inside made a film of sweat rise on my forehead, and as I sat at our table, Vanessa stared at me questioningly.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she remarked.

  “He didn’t answer the phone,” I mumbled, wiping at my damp face with a napkin and taking a deep quaff of my cider to steel myself. “I saw someone outside, though. They…ran away from me. Well, maybe they weren’t running from me but it was kind of strange…”

  “What do you mean, they ran away from you?”

  “He was hiding in a shop doorway. I think it was a guy. And he ran away when I came outside.” I looked at my unfinished baguette. Maybe I could take it home and finish it later.

  “Did you see his face?” She sucked the last of her cocktail up the straw and put the glass to one side for the waiter to collect.

  “No. He was wearing a red hoodie, though.”

  “It might have just been some scrub taking a piss and you caught him in the act,” she suggested hopefully, giving me a reassuring smile.

  “Yeah, probably,” I agreed, though it was obvious I wasn’t completely certain.

  Neither of us spoke for a moment and I picked at my food, stuffing some into my mouth even though I didn’t much feel like eating.

  “Anyway, about what you said earlier. You know what? Fuck it. I don’t have any job prospects and doing what I enjoy for money might be a lot of fun,” I declared, and her eyes lit up at the sound of my words. “Okay, so David might not like it, but we haven’t been seeing each other long and I’ve got bills to pay. So yeah, let’s do it.”

  “Really?” She grinned at me excitedly as she reached across the table to grab my hands.

  I grinned back, unable to stop myself from smiling when she looked at me like that. “Really.”

  Chapter 9

  I woke early the following morning. Waking up in Vanessa’s house disoriented me at first, and when I rolled over, expecting to be on the left hand side of my own bed with access to the rest of the room, I instead found myself facing the wall. The house was silent except for the rumbling of my belly and the creaky aching in my body that signalled dehydration.

  I crawled out of bed in my underwear, shrugged on my pyjamas, and scuttled into the hallway. Nobody else was up yet, so I tiptoed down the stairs as quietly as possible and went into the kitchen to make some breakfast. While the kettle was boiling, I spoon-fed myself mouthfuls of cornflakes and scrolled through my email inbox on my phone, wading through all the junk and reminders but there was nothing worth looking at.

  I went to sit in the living room in front of the window, gazing out over the treetops at the other houses across the road as I replayed last night’s events in my mind. The image of the red hoodie hadn’t left me; in fact, just before I had fallen asleep after collapsing into bed, all I could think about what just that. I recalled the first time something strange had happened, when someone had been hiding behind my bushes and had run away when I’d called to them. They were wearing a red jumper, too. The only perso
n I knew for certain who owned something of the like was David. There was no way I could deny it any longer.

  Bitterness seethed within and disappointment made my eyes prickle with what felt like tears. I cared about David; I had fallen for him. Yet, it seemed he was stalking me. Why? Was it some kind of weird fetish; did he get off on following me around, spying on me, scaring me? Everything added up. The stalking began when I’d first noticed him at the club, all the strange goings on, the trespasser looking through the window, posting things to my home. But I was in love with David…

  I thought our relationship would bloom into something wonderful and the love for him that was growing in my heart took the brunt of this storm, already beginning to wither as I came to the conclusion that my partner was not as honest as I’d thought. Why would he do this to me when he already had me? I tried to envisage all the possibilities. Tried to understand it from his point of view. But even then, it still didn’t make any sense to me.

  What if I confronted him and he admitted it? What if he denied it? Should I give him a second chance? Should I believe him?

  I had learned from past experiences that relations that began on unsteady terms were like houses built on sand; gradually, the foundations would be washed away in the tide. If David was already behaving this way, it would only get worse. I had the option of trying to change him, but would he change? What if he became possessive and abusive, began following me everywhere and preventing me from seeing my friends? But he didn’t seem like the sort of person who would do that…I felt so conflicted. But I knew what I had to do.

  I half-drained my mug of tea and swiped my phone’s screen, unlocking it and opening the messaging app. I decided I would text him; we needed to talk.

  Hi David, can you come and meet me today? There’s something I want to talk to you about.

  No Xs or emojis. My message looked bare without them. I was serious though. Within seconds, I got a reply.

  Yes, Sir! Where do you want me to meet you? I miss you very much & can’t wait to see you x