Have Your Cake

by Elise K. Ackers

  The man opposite her had dressed up for the occasion, and age had done him a swell of favours. Twenty years ago he’d been a mess of mismatched buttons and buttonholes, torn trousers, and wayward hair. Abigail remembered him trailing after Louisa at school, enraptured by her. Calling Louisa’s name again and again, desperate for her attention. That boyhood crush had evolved into a long-time friendship, and he was here today because Louisa had asked him to be. In town for a few short days on business, Ryan was the perfect co-star for this one-time show, for soon he would be gone, but the damage would be done.

  A sudden shift in the air told Abigail that the street door had been thrown open, and her eyes darted to the vase. One man, two—each of them too stocky to be the man of the moment. But the third, he was a match in height and build, and although stretched and overbright in the chrome surface, the grey suit appeared to match the one Mal had admired himself in this morning.

  He’d kissed her goodbye. Actually had the gall to kiss her on the mouth and chuck her under the chin as he’d left. The weekend of their engagement party had ruined her life, but Mal had moved on completely. His irritation was a fast fuse whenever she shunned his affections, and she’d lost count of the lectures he’d delivered, like sermons for her to breathe in and live by. Her fear of him and resentment towards him were inconveniences he hoped to have weathered through soon.

  Any hope that Abigail had had that he would trade her in for a less jumpy, more adoring model had been dashed when he’d taken a fistful of her hair and whispered, ‘This can be an easy life or it can be a hard life. Whichever you choose, it will be a life with me. So I wish you’d hurry up and snap out of this … funk.’

  Half an hour later he’d asked if she wanted to watch a movie on the couch together.

  Abigail refocused on her date. Ryan. He was scanning the floor for someone who could bring him another lager, and let out a breath of surprise when she linked her fingers through his.

  ‘It’s time,’ she murmured, leaning towards him. She drew his eye to the spare space beside her. ‘There’s plenty of room.’

  There wasn’t. It was a booth for two. Three if a chair was put on the end. So, in effect, she was suggesting they squash in. Ryan understood his role and was out of his chair and rounding the table in one shallow, nervous breath.

  She scooted over and he lowered himself down onto the too-small space beside her. She inched further against the wall, and he followed her across the leather. Hip to hip, her breast grazing his arm and their legs pressed together, they smiled nervously at one another.

  ‘Thanks for doing this.’

  ‘I could just deck him.’

  Abigail smiled. ‘Incredibly tempting, but I need a more long-term solution. And hey, thanks in advance.’

  The group of three had finished speaking with the seating attendant and were coming this way. She could hear her hated fiancé’s rich, deep voice, light with confidence and his complete absence of conscience.

  It was time to give herself away.

  ‘Ready?’ she asked.

  ‘Surprisingly so,’ her date replied.

  It wasn’t funny, but it didn’t need to be. She threw back her head and laughed. The sound carried, distinctly hers. So recognisable that it arrested the approaching conversation. She didn’t look at the vase now. She didn’t dare. She seized her scapegoat’s hand, settled it high on her thigh, then leaned in to seal her fate. The kiss was jarring in its unfamiliarity. She hadn’t had another man’s mouth on hers in years, not since she and Mal had begun dating, and the shape of it was so different that her own lips felt lost and obstructed. The unfamiliar fingers inched a fraction towards her inner thigh and flexed against her skin.

  Then he was gone. Lifted out of the air beside her, plucked from her rookie mouth. Her eyes flew open and adrenaline spiked through her middle like a shot of electricity.

  The moment had come.

  Ryan was on his feet, hauled to them by the strong hand gripping the back of his sports jacket. And the Member for Sheffield, who had come in here only moments ago, was gone. In his place was the creature Abigail knew. The vile, abusive animal that had intimidated her and controlled her. The red of his rage was a terrible thing. It was like a vacuum, pulling all the air in the room towards it. All around them eyes widened as instincts flared. In that moment they were all prey, recognising the predator amongst them.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ A barrel-chested old man, clearly of significant import judging by the way he held himself and the crispness of his vowels, stepped around Mal’s broad frame and pulled up short. Ryan, now pinned by the neck, tried to pivot in his direction but only managed to tighten his own shirt collar around his throat.

  Mal was staring at Abigail. The man dangling from his hand was nothing to him, but the woman in the short skirt, sitting in the most private booth in this most respectable of restaurants, was—as he’d said himself—an extension of his own reputation. His fiancée, who mirrored all of his good values and represented just one of his many faultless choices, had just been publicly exposed as a home-wrecking cheat. And if he could kill her right there and get away with it, Abigail thought that he would.

  His strategic thinking was coming. She knew it was. She was counting on it. The shock and rage were just taking their time on the stage. Any minute now.

  Very slowly, as if inching away from a shark with bloodlust in its eyes, Abigail slid out of the booth and got to her feet.

  Ryan was protesting. He’d do better to keep quiet so as to not draw attention to himself, but Abigail couldn’t worry about him. She had her own life to save. She was sorry to have dragged him into this scandal, but she’d needed someone, and he’d known what he was signing up for when he’d agreed to help Louisa’s sister out of a bad situation.

  He’d played the part well.

  Mal looked from Abigail to Ryan, then shoved the man bodily to the floor.

  Ryan collapsed in a graceless display of loose limbs and overstretched fabric. There was the soft sound of stitching tearing.

  Mal’s face was almost as red as the deep burgundy shirt he wore. Abigail watched him breathe, and think, and restrain. It was costing him everything he had not to reach for her with the same hand that had moments ago been so unforgiving on Ryan’s neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. And oh, she sounded broken. ‘Baby, I’m so sorry.’ She made sure her voice carried. They had an audience of at least forty and this was going to be the performance of her lifetime.

  ‘What …’ Mal stopped, perhaps sensing that he had not yet grasped full control of himself. His hands were shaking fists at his side.

  She pretended to reach for him, then withdrew, as if unsure. The shakes were real, though. The tremors rocking her entire body were born from fear and exhilaration. She was almost free.

  ‘You’re cheating on me?’ He was arrogant in his incredulity. Who would, after all, even feel the need to cheat on this great man?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she returned. ‘You’re just … you’re working all the time. Such long hours. And I … That’s no excuse, I know. But I …’

  There it was: the moment when he realised his course of action. She saw it light up his pupils like fire. Control repossessed his looming body, and he stepped back.

  ‘We’re engaged to be married,’ he said. His voice carried as far as her own.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Yes.

  ‘Aren’t I enough—?’ He abandoned that direction quickly. It must have been abhorrent to him that anyone might think he was not enough for an intimate partner. ‘How long has this been going on?’ he asked instead.

  ‘I just met her!’ the crumpled heap cried up from the carpet. No-one was holding him down, Ryan just hadn’t gotten himself back onto his feet. Perhaps he knew he’d only be knocked off them again.

  Abigail said nothing. This was Mal’s show now.

  ‘I’ve given you everything,’ Mal went on. ‘Everything I do, every hour I work—it’s for this communi
ty but also for our life together!’

  She almost nodded her approval. He’d tied in his political selflessness quite well.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘it’s not your fault.’

  Some might think it strange that she wasn’t troubling to keep her voice low, but they’d misremember in time. Within the hour they would be parroting whatever story Mal pitched, and she’d be long gone.

  ‘Damn right it’s not my fault,’ he returned, letting an edge creep into his voice. He flinched and glanced about the room, and Abigail had the absurd thought that he would have apologised for his language had there been any minors to overhear. ‘I’ve been so patient. I’ve waited for whatever this thing was that you were going through to pass. But now I see that …’

  There was a beat of silence, in which everyone in the restaurant held their collective breaths.

  ‘I want you to get out,’ he said to the floor. ‘This is over. We’re done.’

  Abigail hesitated. For show, of course. Then she began to inch around him. She stepped over Ryan’s leg, then his arm, then hastily crossed the room to the front door. The seating attendant, mouth agape, didn’t stop her. And each step made the rectangle that was Abigail’s escape larger and larger, until at last, she slapped her hand against the wooden door and pushed, and the fresh air from the street whipped in and pushed her hair back from her face.

  There was a taxi waiting across the road, its meter running and a red duffel bag on the backseat.

  Abigail ran towards it.

  Chapter 28

  Reputation

  The van looked good as new, but it was definitely slower. There was some sort of speed inhibitor on the engine now, and every driver on the roads around her seemed determinedly unhurried. They certainly weren’t fussed about getting out of her way, even when she leaned on her horn and waved furiously at them through the window.

  It was a twenty minute drive to Camden Park, traffic permitting. How many tweets and retweets and shares would be in the world by then?

  Boucake was trending in the worst possible way. There had been reports of deliberate sabotage by a jilted bride. Expired ingredients. Malicious dealings and reports from a bride that the store owner had harassed her at home—for failing to leave a favourable review, of all things.

  Abigail pushed her foot heavier against the accelerator.

  She almost outpaced her guilt, but it was a light-footed thing and it caught up with her quickly. She had crushed Dillon. It had been brutal. And the way he’d collapsed in on himself when she’d thrown his own ugly history back in his face … He’d probably never trust anyone again. Of course, she wasn’t a cheat—her reputation as one was undeserved, despite that little bit of theatre she’d staged back home. But Dillon had been in her way. He’d been stopping her from getting to Boucake.

  It had been the fastest thing—the only thing to do.

  At least that’s what she told herself.

  Maybe she’d make it up to him one day, when this latest nightmare was behind her. But there wasn’t time to think about that now. Her second life was in cardiac arrest.

  When she got back to the shop the closed sign was up and the blinds were drawn, but the door was ajar, so Abigail barrelled through it and slammed it behind her. Brittany had Google alerts sent to her phone as well, she would have seen this reputational meltdown, it was unsurprising that she’d stayed back to help with damage control.

  An unfamiliar half-click arrested Abigail’s progress across the shop floor. She turned, brows furrowing. A line of evening light that shouldn’t have been there made Abigail realise that the door had failed to close, and upon closer inspection, she saw that it might never close again. Not in its current state. The lock had been jimmied and the door hardware was a mess of broken pieces and scratched metal.

  Her heart managed one fearful lunge in her chest before the sound of fast approaching footsteps made her whirl around. A tall, wiry figure was charging towards her, and she was so startled to not see Brittany that her reflexes stuttered. He was upon her, and as she was being pushed to the ground her staggered mind recognised the weight and smell of her ex-lover, and ex-abuser.

  Her head crashed onto the ground, driven against it by a big palm and long, strong fingers, and the world went bright and unsteady in the corners. Pain speared against the backs of her eyes and shot down her spine like a bullet from a gun barrel. A knee pressed into the soft flesh of her inner elbow and a hand gripped her other wrist. She was pinned in place, his body on top of her.

  Memories burst in her brain like fireworks. Abigail huddled in the bedroom, cowering against Mal’s raised arm. The crack in the ceiling that had been the last thing she’d seen before he’d choked her into unconsciousness. She forced them back. Memories couldn’t help her now.

  The palm lifted from her forehead. It dragged down her face, the fingers trailing. Suddenly they seized her cheeks and squeezed. Her distorted mouth became this strange pipe of sound—her ragged breaths whistling in and out. She stared up at him, wide-eyed and afraid.

  Mal smiled down at her.

  Very slowly, as if with infinite care, he lowered his face and touched his lips to her own unwilfully puckered ones. She struggled, but he was too strong and the effort just exhausted her.

  ‘A little birdie tells me this business is doomed,’ he murmured against her mouth. His breath was hot and sickening, and everything in Abigail reviled it. ‘A little blue birdie,’ he said, doubtlessly referring to Twitter, ‘has told everyone all about your dishonest little enterprise. And when people come for proof, I promise you they’ll find it.’

  Her eyebrows came together, and he indulged her confusion.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how many out-of-date products you can find in a senior’s home. They’re only too grateful to exchange them for the newer stuff. Expired flour. Spoiled sugar. And I thought those things had an indefinite shelf-life. The things you learn.’

  Had Mal truly used the annual seniors’ food drive for evil purposes? Only the sickest of sick minds could twist something so generous and community-minded into something so self-serving.

  ‘I learned something else today,’ he went on, and fear prickled under Abigail’s skin. Genuine, I-might-not-survive-this fear. Because she knew what was coming. ‘I learned that I was manipulated. “Convince him to leave you”—is that what you said?’ He leaned closer to her face. ‘Is that what you did, Abigail?’

  He released her mouth so she could answer.

  She spat in his face.

  What came next was a roar so bestial that it rattled the glass shelves and echoed in the small shop. He lifted his hand from her face to wipe at his own, and Abigail whipped her head to the side, terrified. Something caught her eyes and she stilled. The line of light between the door and the doorframe was bright but broken. Something was outside. It was a moving shadow. Someone. Looking in.

  Brittany.

  Abigail took in the young woman’s wild, disbelieving eyes, and the indistinct shape in the middle of her body—a phone?—and hastily looked away. Mal was still wiping the spit from his right eye. Abigail glanced back and saw Brittany lift the phone to her ear. Then she was gone, and the line of light was unbroken once more.

  Abigail closed her eyes.

  Brittany was calling the police. Which meant Abigail just had to survive this for—what—eight minutes or so? Ten? She could do that. She could survive.

  She would survive.

  Mal wasn’t going to take any more away from her. Those days were gone. These were new times, and Abigail had spent the last six months wishing for a do-over. Evidently it had come.

  She really should be more careful about what she wished for in the future.

  She wheezed in pain when Mal shifted his entire body weight onto her stomach and arms to push himself up. There was a fraction of a reprieve, then his hands were burning vices on her skin, hauling her to her feet. She stumbled and he yanked her against him. One hand snaked into her hair and grasped so ti
ghtly that she was sure her scalp would bleed.

  He took a clumsy step towards the kitchen and she was dragged alongside. ‘I had you,’ he said furiously, ‘right where I wanted you. How I wanted you. You didn’t manipulate me.’

  Her mind raced, searching for possibilities. He was protecting his groin from her knees and her hands were restrained behind her back in his strong, bruising grip. His face was finally no longer an eyelash from hers, probably so she couldn’t spit again, but that meant she couldn’t headbutt him. She could fall, and hope her bodyweight unbalanced him and forced him to let go of her, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to scramble to her feet before he’d get on top of her again.

  She had to wait for him to screw up.

  The kitchen, typically immaculately clean, was in a state unfit for food preparation. Mal had brought props. Broken bags of varying ingredients were piled up on the workbench, some of them split open like punctured organs, and some of them soiled by mould. There was a garbage bag discarded on the floor, amongst disturbed utensils, pots and pans.

  If his plan was to call her kitchen’s cleanliness into question, Abigail thought he’d been rather short-sighted about it. The room had clearly been interfered with. Cleanliness couldn’t be faked; every shelf and item in this room had been cleaned and positioned carefully. Some of them literally gleamed under the overhead lights. Dirtiness, similarly, was difficult to create without time. The only mould and grime within here was that which he had brought in and so carelessly dumped in his haste to be rid of it.

  ‘So, you staged that little scene,’ he said, continuing the conversation she’d interrupted with her phlegm. ‘In front of the senators.’ He let go of her hair and Abigail thought she might be seeing stars. The relief made her sigh and drop her head forward. A dragging sound and then a sharp rattle told her he was going through the drawers. Looking for what?

  The knife block was opposite them, six feet away. That distance was important to maintain.

  ‘You embarrassed me publicly so I couldn’t retaliate, is that it?’