The Regret

by Dan Malakin

  ‘What about some flowers? Or a box of fucking chocolates?’ She began to cry again. ‘How could you do this to me, Spence? How could you…?’

  ‘Here,’ he said, reaching into his back pocket. He held out a folded handkerchief.

  ‘No thank you.’

  He drew his hand back. ‘Try not to blow your nose on the sheets. It’s not very ladylike.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Neither is that.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I think you’re a bit tired.’ He started to stand.

  She looked at the pills and needle on the tray. Was he leaving her here to die?

  ‘Wait!’

  Spence casually lowered himself down. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you want from me? Is it sex? You want to have sex with me? I thought you were gay.’

  ‘Have you ever, in person, seen me so much as kiss a man?’

  It was true, she hadn’t. She’d been shown a parade of boyfriends in photos, lapped up lurid stories of late-night encounters in nightclubs, but had never actually seen proof of his sexuality beyond what he’d told her. Rachel slumped back against her pillow. The full realisation of her situation hit her – that it was Spence all along, her friend Spence, and now he had her chained to his bed – and she let out a disbelieving laugh. ‘But why all the charade? Why get to know me? Why not just beat me over the head in a dark alley and drag me here?’

  ‘You don’t capture birds of paradise by beating them over the head.’

  She kicked her legs, shaking the chains. ‘What difference would it have made?’

  ‘I admit, things haven’t gone exactly to plan.’

  ‘To plan? What plan was that?’

  ‘I’d have liked the honeymoon period first, before we got to this stage.’

  ‘Honeymoon period? But I didn’t… I don’t…’ She stopped herself, knowing it’d do no good saying she didn’t find him attractive. ‘But we were friends,’ she finished, lamely.

  ‘We’d have got it on, eventually. Maybe after you heard about Mark’s engagement.’

  ‘His what? They’ve only been together a few weeks!’

  ‘Visa issues with his Vietnamese honey trap, I believe. From what I hear, all you have to do is touch his penis and he’ll say yes to anything.’

  Rachel rattled her head, mouth loose, speechless.

  ‘Who else would you have turned to?’ Spence carried on. ‘Your dad? That old drunk’s probably hitting the bottle as we speak. How about Becca? She’s one cosmo from a breakdown. Konrad? God, I hate that butch handsome type – so derivative. That worscht is lucky he’s not doing five years in Pentonville. No, it’d be me. I’d be there, looking after you, caring for you, as you got thinner and thinner, weaker and weaker.’

  ‘But… but I thought…’

  ‘I know, I know, you thought he was gay. But it’s not as though the queer hadn’t been with a woman before. You know that, right? He’d opened up to you about his past, how he was unsure for many years, and had even been engaged to a girl at one point. Twenty-one, I think he was, if I remember the story correctly. And he was so hurt by the whole Andreas debacle. Men are so callous, so heartless… One night you’d have sunk a bottle of something seriously alcoholic together, and he’d have woken in your bed.’ He gave her a seductive lift of the eyebrows. ‘And you would have asked him to stay.’

  ‘So– so that was your plan? Ruin my life so much that I wouldn’t be able to live without you?’

  ‘I prefer to think of it more as boy meets girl, boy falls in love–’

  ‘Boy chains girl to bed? I don’t think I’ve seen that one.’

  ‘Like I said, we weren’t supposed to get to this stage for a while, but what can we do? You’re here now. That’s the important thing.’

  The way he was being with her, calm, almost dignified, while she carried on hysterically, was too much. ‘What can we do? I’m chained to the bed, you maniac!’

  He rolled his eyes as if to ask, Why are you always so dramatic?

  ‘Look,’ he said, reasonably. ‘You’ve just said nothing would’ve happened between us. We were friends, right?’

  She nodded, warily.

  ‘I wanted you,’ he went on. ‘You’d never have come to me willingly – even if you thought I was straight – so I took you. It’s not rocket science. Everyone can do the same as me. The world is there for the taking, you’ve just got to have the balls to grab it.’

  ‘And you don’t care if I don’t feel the same way.’

  Spence lifted his spine, and straightened his shirt. ‘Does the king care that the young girl brought to him in the night would rather still be asleep in her bed? Does a village chieftain worry that the beautiful tiger he captures would rather be roaming the jungle?’

  ‘I’m not an animal. I’m a human being.’

  ‘Please. If I saw people that way, I’d never get anything done.’

  ‘Why me? Of all the people you could have done this to, all the hot celebrities–’

  ‘Pfft. Plastic.’

  ‘But why pick me? What did I ever do…?’ She felt herself losing it again, and fought back the tears. Hold it together!

  ‘Wow, you’re really fishing for compliments now! Okay, I’ll bite. You’re tall, I like that. And you’re very attractive, physically I mean. You’d certainly never go for someone who looked like me.’

  Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but his shake of the head shut her up.

  ‘Don’t deny it,’ he said. ‘One thing I can’t stand is liars. What else…? You’re intelligent – and strong-willed, I admire that. I hate weak people.’ He shook the bed frame. ‘This right here would be no fun if you were weak, and this is usually the best bit. Shit gets real in this room. But I guess the main thing is, I don’t know… you intrigue me. Which is not something that happens very often. We’ve actually got a lot in common. There’s this darkness inside you, it goes right to your core. I can see it. And it really gets me going. The whole starvation thing is incredibly sexy.’

  ‘Go for anorexics, do you?’

  ‘Never had one before, but I’m a convert.’ He leaned forward, eyes sparking, Spence again. ‘Very heroin chic.’

  When he sat back, all trace of her friend was gone.

  How had she brought this thing into her life? Was it the d0xing? Had he been stalking her for years, waiting for the right moment to strike? ‘How long have you been… watching me?’

  ‘If you must know, I’ve been interested in you for a while now, but the timing was never great. Either you were too young, or I was with someone else, then you got pregnant with Lily. I didn’t want to interrupt that. I’m not a monster!’ He looked in her eyes, as though waiting for her to agree, and she quickly nodded. ‘I was keeping tabs on that sap in prison, saw he was up for parole. And you had a new boyfriend, so I could work with that – I was single myself and looking for a new project. So I guess it all just fell into place.’

  The way he was talking, as if he were relaying some vaguely interesting anecdote about how he landed a new job, instead of the nuts and bolts of why he had destroyed her fucking life, was too much. She failed to keep the sarcasm from her voice. ‘Fell into place? How is tricking your way into my life for nearly a year – you’re not a real nurse, I take it?’ Spence gave her a little caught me pout. ‘So you pretend to be a nurse–’

  ‘How do you think I’m such a good chef? Or interior designer? One of the things I love most about my romances is the opportunity to broaden my skill sets, and being with you gave me a chance to get some real-time medical training. There’s only so much you can learn from skimming text books and binge watching Casualty.’

  ‘But the patients… You could have killed someone.’

  ‘More than one.’ He waved dismissively. ‘Ehh, they were old.’

  Rachel tried to keep her face blank as she processed what he was saying. How many times had he appeared in someone’s life and destroyed it to the point where they’d turned to him for co
mfort? How many people had ended up chained to the bed like this? And no-one had ever found him out, otherwise she wouldn’t be here now.

  ‘Is it so hard to understand?’ he said. ‘I saw you, I fell in love with you, so I took you. That’s what love is, right? Taking what you want and making it your own.’

  How he was speaking reminded her of the psychopaths she’d met during her stint at The Northside Centre, the kid who stabbed the other boy in the throat for sitting in his chair. She needed to stay calm, humour him. He was liable to be unpredictable. Prone to sudden violence.

  ‘Okay, you took me,’ she said. ‘So what are you going to do with me?’

  ‘That is up to you.’

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, cautiously.

  ‘Straighten that out,’ he said, nodding to the duvet. ‘Cover your legs.’

  She did as he asked. ‘That better?’

  Spence leaned forward. ‘Make it real. As long as you make it real, I’ll stay. If you don’t, I’ll go. It’s that simple.’

  She couldn’t reason with him, that much was clear, so instead she needed to bide her time, see what he was going to do next. Maybe, when he eventually got round to raping her, she could convince him to unchain her legs, then overpower him.

  ‘I’ll make it real,’ she said, and forced her lips into a smile. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  He pushed the cuff of his shirt back, and setting his shoulders like a catalogue model, checked his watch. ‘I’d say it was nearly time for dinner. You must be hungry.’

  That was an understatement. It felt like her stomach was turning itself inside out, looking for scraps of food in its pockets. But she could handle that. More important, he needed to think she couldn’t eat, that she was getting weaker. Too weak to try to escape.

  ‘I don’t think…’ she said.

  ‘I’ll make it, so it’s there if you want,’ he replied, his smile impish – “her” Spence used to say the same.

  At the door, he turned back to her. ‘One more thing. It’s perfectly natural for someone in your position to try to think of ways to get away, or to bash something over my head when I’m not looking. If that’s what you’re thinking of doing, then let me tell you one of my favourite sayings. There’s nothing worse than knowing what you had, but lost forever.’

  He fixed his eyes on hers, his stare cold, and mimed slicing across his palm. ‘You still have your daughter at home. I’d hate for something else to happen to her.’

  When he was gone, Rachel covered her face and started to cry. Oh, Lily. The thought that she’d never–

  She lowered her hands, her eyes widening.

  She saw herself as a teenager in the eating disorder clinic, laptop balanced on her legs, Mark beside her as they trawled the dark web for someone to help frame Alan Griffin. She saw the chat window, the name flashing as words appeared.

  There’s nothing worse than knowing what you had, but lost forever.

  That was how this thing had appeared in her life – she’d invited him! He was the hacker they paid on the dark web to plant the pictures on Griffin’s computer.

  He was Regret.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Date

  Was it so strange what Spence was doing? Did a dictator think the people waving in a crowd were his loyal and loving subjects? Did a pop starlet believe the sycophants in her entourage cooed at her every utterance because she was smarter than the Dalai Lama? Did the sleaze handing over fifty quid in a Soho bedsit reckon the prostitute reclining on the plastic-sheeted bed liked having sex with lonely overweight losers who probably hadn’t washed their balls in a week?

  No, no, and absolutely no.

  All the punter, the dictator, the starlet wanted was the performance to be convincing. It was the same with Spence – in his own screwed up way, he wanted them to be together. Despite keeping her chained to the bed, he thought they could somehow have a relationship.

  If that’s what he wants, that’s what he’ll get.

  She had to be like a Geisha, smiling even while some saggy eighty-year-old thrust his liver-spotted junk at her mouth. If she didn’t, she’d never see Lily again.

  It helped that he’d given her more pills, so she could pretend to be out of it, less of a threat. Sendorax, that was the name stamped on the strip of ten. Probably another opioid. The easiest thing to get her hooked on. She’d even made a joke – Least I won’t be able to flush them away this time. When he handed them to her, she popped two and put them in her mouth. After he left, she took them out and hid them under the far side of the mattress, beside the squashed chocolates she’d been too scared to throw down the toilet, in case they didn’t flush. How ironic they might now be what saved her. She was going to need her strength for when she tried to escape.

  Propped with pillows into as much of a sitting position as her chain would allow, her cheeks slack and eyes glazed, Rachel watched the television. The Naked Chef on Food TV+1, Jamie Oliver flapping his lips over a cottage pie. She needed to keep up the pretence of being spaced out, even when Spence wasn’t in the bedroom with her. Especially when he wasn’t. Unlike her Spence, who couldn’t take his coat off without a fanfare, this new incarnation moved as stealthily as a panther hunting prey. Once, he was two steps into the room, checking if she wanted a drink, before she realised he was there.

  She reached beside the mattress, eyes flitting to the door, leaning slowly, ready to make out she was changing positions if he caught her. Her fingers found one of the flattened chocolates. A Bounty, nice. The coconut could count as one of her five a day. She held it under the duvet, trying to time the crinkling of the wrapper to Jamie bashing his spatula around the frying pan. When to make a move? Now, when she had the most strength? Or in a few weeks’ time, when she’d earned Spence’s trust and his defences were down?

  She slipped the chocolate into her mouth, chewing fast, swallowing as soon as she was able and making her face slack again. No, it had to be soon. All his bullshit about love – more likely he’d fuck her a few times then leave her here to die. Even if he kept her longer, trapped in his sociopathic version of a honeymoon couple, she’d only get weaker, her body becoming frailer and more painful the longer she was chained to the bed, and he’d still get rid of her in the end. What then? After he’d left her here to die? She wouldn’t put it past him to spy on Lily for the next twenty years, then do the same to her, going through them like some macabre mother/daughter fantasy. She could not risk that happening.

  Should she tell him she knew he was the hacker they paid to frame Griffin? He hadn’t offered that information himself, so maybe he didn’t want her to know. Could she use that, somehow? Why hadn’t he told her? He was keen enough to mention the other women he’d done this to – a chef, an interior designer, and who knew how many more.

  This is where shit gets real.

  She shuddered. That did not sound good.

  From the kitchen came the dairy scent of melting butter, and behind that, a back-note of brine. Seafood. Her mind flitted with images of poaching salmon, fillets of sea bass browning in the pan, golden crab cakes garnished with herbed aioli, whetting her mouth in anticipation. She reached for another chocolate, a caramel. Somehow, she needed to convince Spence to unchain her. It wasn’t going to be easy. He’d already refused one request, when she asked to go to the toilet; he told her to wait, then came back with a bedpan. When she moaned of the indignity, he reminded her he’d been working as a nurse on a geriatric ward for the last year, so had seen every conceivable type of waste producible by the human body. In vast quantities too.

  ‘You haven’t seen mine,’ she replied, petulantly.

  ‘Not yet,’ he grinned, and left her to it.

  She needn’t have worried – she was as clogged as a London gutter. Although, for perhaps the first time in her life, she was happy to have constipation. The one thing that could make this situation even worse would be interspersing it with moments when she handed him a pan full of her own poo. Hopefully sh
e would be out of here before that ever happened.

  Two chocolates later, Spence appeared in the doorway. Rachel caught the movement out the corner of her eye, but stayed glazed to the television, where Jamie was blackening some broccoli to go with the cottage pie.

  ‘Rachel,’ Spence said softly. ‘Sweetness?’

  That’s what she called Lily. You bastard, you can’t have that!

  She swung her head around, heavy-lidded, blinking like she was struggling to stay awake. ‘Hey… What’s…’

  ‘Let’s have dinner, eh?’ His voice was soft, compassionate almost, as though they were trapped here together, and he were as much of a victim of these circumstances as her. ‘I made something special.’

  ‘Smells lovely,’ she mumbled, not wanting to open her mouth too much in case he smelled the chocolate on her breath.

  ‘How are those painkillers?’

  ‘It’s nice.’

  ‘Thought you’d like them,’ he said, coming into the room.

  She rubbed her face, making her eyes wide, like she was trying to wake herself up, but froze when she saw he was holding another tray. ‘What’s on that?’

  ‘Oysters,’ he said, putting it on the side. ‘I know you love them.’

  She felt her throat seize. Keep it together. Don’t show anything. Not only was he wearing what Konrad wore on their Spitalfields date, he’d made the same food.

  ‘I do love them,’ she murmured, and placed a hand over her stomach. ‘It’s just… it’s not…’

  ‘Have as much or as little as you want,’ Spence said, giving her a coy glance. ‘I would never dream of telling you what to eat.’ He switched off the television, took some tea candles from the tray, and spaced them around. When lit, they made a soft orange haze in the room.

  ‘Romantic,’ Rachel said, dreamily.

  ‘I want things to be special. On our first date.’

  The same clothes as Konrad, the same hairstyle, the same food. What did Spence think would happen? That the candles would soften the light and the pills soften her mind so much her eyes would forget the fifty kilos separating the two men? That she’d actually think she was back home with her boyfriend, and not chained to some lunatic’s bed?