Under His Influence

by Justine Elyot

  “Let go of me.”

  The door opened at the ground floor, and a group of expectant elevator riders took a step back, curious and perturbed by the little tableau in front of them.

  Liam dropped Mimi’s wrist and let her march out first. He must have seen the beady eye of the security guard on him, so he slunk out and appeared to decide against following Mimi straightaway.

  Mimi breathed a sigh of mixed relief and guilt, putting her head down and making her determined way up Leather Lane towards the shops.

  She picked up her mobile and dialled John’s number, wanting to hear his actual voice rather than its disembodied version floating around her head. She wanted to feel normal for a moment or two—was that so much to ask?

  “What do I tell him?” she opened abruptly.

  “You seemed to do very well without my input. You gave him enough for him to make his own inference. Now he thinks we’ve been in touch and we’re the jilted lovers, conspiring in our heartbreak. You don’t need to tell him anything more.”

  “I feel terrible. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Pah. I don’t want to waste another second’s thought on him. He’s irrelevant. That’s all. Are you at the shops yet?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Plenty of lubricant, don’t forget. And a bumper pack of condoms. Large size, of course. Perhaps some massage oil. Would you like that?”

  “I don’t need a shopping list. I’m fine.”

  She was in the chemist shop now, browsing the racks of intimate goods, keeping her eyes well down.

  “Maybe some kind of rub for muscular aches and pains. I’m pretty sure you’ll be needing something like that in the morning.”

  “Oh, stop it. I hate you.”

  “I love your passion, Miranda.”

  “Fuck you.”

  A figure appeared beside Mimi, browsing the ranks of prophylactics and sex aids with her.

  “Friend of yours?” he asked with deceptive lightness.

  Mimi whipped the phone back into her handbag and scowled at Liam.

  “Are you fucking stalking me? Go away.”

  “Well, this makes everything a hundred per cent clearer.” He moped, picking up the box of condoms from her basket and inspecting it. “Extra large, eh? You lucky thing.”

  “Liam…” Mimi felt his disappointment and regret hit her in the stomach.

  “Have fun,” he said with a bitter laugh, turning to go, then he stopped for a moment and faced her again, suddenly curious. “Who was that on the phone anyway?”

  “It was Stone. I was trying to tell him…that he was wrong about you… Oh, fuck it. Never mind. Bye. Hope you meet someone nicer than me sometime.”

  She stalked off to the checkout with tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

  Anna wasn’t dreaming, exactly, but neither was she enjoying that oblivious sleep from which refreshment comes. Snippets of thoughts and fears chased each other through the dark corners of her mind, accompanied by visions—a baby’s terrified eyes, the wide, grinning corners of John’s mouth, Mimi’s hand on hers, Liam calling out some indistinct words of warning.

  It was a relief when the clangour of the old-fashioned doorbell dragged her out of this seminightmarish state, and she pulled herself off the bed, patted down her silk loungewear, pulled a comb through her hair and went to investigate.

  Must be a delivery, she thought, and once she reached the top of the stairs she saw Luana dealing with the caller, seemingly uninterested in whatever they had to offer.

  “Jehovah’s Witness?” She yawned sympathetically, descending the top couple of stairs. Then she stopped and squinted. She recognised the smartly-dressed woman on the doorstep from somewhere.

  “Oh, you are in,” the woman said, shoving a determined path past Luana, who looked up at Anna with something like fury on her thin face. “I knew I was being fobbed off.”

  “You call,” insisted Luana in angry broken English. “You call first. You not come here.”

  “Oh, bother that.” The woman dismissed her, looking about her at the spacious hallway. “I was passing. Why wouldn’t I call in on my new sister-in-law? I don’t think I need her housekeeper’s permission. Or do I, Anna?”

  “Oh!” Anna bit her lip, ashamed at her failure to recognise the woman to whom she was now related. “Caroline. I’m so sorry.”

  She ran down the stairs, forgetting to be careful of the fragile life inside her in her momentary joy at some uncomplicated human company.

  “You know, this is awful, but I didn’t recognise you. You know how it was at the wedding. So many people. And everything happening at once.”

  “Indeed.” Caroline smiled, a grimly sympathetic gesture. “Well, it’s hot out there. I always used to enjoy a cup of tea in John’s back parlour—it catches all the shade on days like these.”

  “Of course. Luana—could you bring us tea, please? And biscuits.”

  Anna and Caro made their way to the back of the house, where a tiled room filled with Spanish-style furniture looked out on to the verdant, sun-blocking foliage of the garden.

  “Well, I would ask you how you are,” opened Caro with heavy implication, “but it seems pretty obvious that you aren’t at all well.”

  “What? Oh no, I’m fine,” Anna said, agitated by the woman’s direct approach. Something about her was reminiscent of Mimi, that big sister take-no-bullshit concern in her tone.

  “Fine? Sweetheart, those shadows under your eyes. Don’t you sleep well?”

  “John says it’s all I do. I sleep all the time. Honestly.”

  “But you’re positively wraithlike, Anna. You look so fragile, and so pale. Oh!” Caro’s eyes opened wide. “Gosh, I’m an idiot. You look tired and you’re sleeping all the time. You can’t already be…?”

  Luana crashed in with the tea tray, dumping it with a rattle of china on the low, tiled coffee table between the sisters-in-law.

  Anna looked down and nodded, her waxen cheeks suddenly suffused with a heated bloom.

  “Oh my! Well…that’s…terrific, of course.”

  Caro sounded uncertain. She looked behind her to find Luana still hovering beneath a large palm.

  “And thank you, Luana. That will be all.”

  She waited until they were alone before speaking again.

  “Congratulations, I mean. I’m going to be an aunt. Auntie Caro. It has a ring to it, though it sounds disgustingly middle-aged.”

  For all the warmth of the words, Anna could not ignore the cautious dismay behind them.

  “Do you think it’s too soon?” she ventured.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think, does it? Are you happy? Is John?”

  Anna picked up the teapot, smelled the tannic strength of the soaked leaves within and felt a twinge of nausea. She held her breath, pouring the brown liquid into Caro’s cup.

  “Oh, I always do milk first, dear,” Caro said absently, before returning to the sixty million dollar question that Anna had hoped to deflect. “So?”

  “Yes. He’s delighted. Really so keen to be a father. This baby will want for nothing.”

  “But you? How do you feel? You’re young, aren’t you? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three. It’s not that young.”

  “I suppose. I don’t know why, but I think of you as younger. Look, I won’t beat about the bush.” Caro paused to add milk to her tea and take an initial sip. “You’re my sister-in-law. You’re family now. I want to ask you a straight question, and I want you to give me a straight answer.”

  The ginger biscuit that had been halfway to Anna’s mouth paused in its journey. Her hand shook and she angled her head down, as if in anticipation of a blow.

  “Do you think John is…well…all right?”

  Anna looked up swiftly. She hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it hadn’t been that.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s my brother, Anna. We grew up together. I’m dreadfully worried about him. The man I saw
at the wedding—the man I’ve known since Saskia’s death—isn’t my brother. He isn’t John as I know him. I just don’t know what to do, Anna, or where to turn. I’m so afraid that something awful has happened to him. You know. Mentally.”

  “Really? Is he really so different?”

  “He was so much fun, Anna, so full of life and enthusiasm. And a real family man. He’d never go longer than a couple of weeks without dropping by or arranging a meet-up. Since Saskia died, I’ve seen him twice. Once at her funeral, once at his wedding. He pretended to be out of the country at Christmas, but he was here. We know he was.”

  “Oh.” Anna had nothing to say to this.

  “Grief is such a hard thing. Does he seem depressed to you?”

  “No. I’m sure he isn’t depressed. He works so hard, all the time, and he has so much energy. I’ve never known anyone with even half his energy.”

  “Really? Excessive amounts of energy, you’d say?”

  “Yes, I suppose. He barely sleeps at all. He’s always working on his machine.”

  “Yes, that’s another thing. What on earth qualifies him to indulge in this weird science? He isn’t a scientist.”

  “Didn’t he study science at university?”

  “No. Philosophy, politics and economics. I don’t know where all this ozone machine nonsense is coming from. It’s so uncharacteristic.”

  “You think it’s…an eccentricity?”

  “I think it’s madness.” Caro paused significantly. “Literally, perhaps.”

  “You think he’s having a breakdown?”

  “I’m very worried, Anna. The nonstop activity—he wasn’t like that before Saskia died. It sounds almost like a phase of bipolar disorder.”

  “You’re saying he’s mentally ill?”

  “I’m saying I think he needs to see somebody. And I’d like you to suggest it to him, if you can. Gently, of course. He has his pride—at least that much hasn’t changed.”

  “He won’t listen to me,” Anna blurted. “He thinks I’m having an affair.”

  Caro put the cup down and stared.

  “But you aren’t?”

  “No, I would never!”

  “Paranoia,” she asserted. “You must see that he isn’t well. Anna, we have to help him.”

  Anna nodded miserably, then poured another cup, allowing Caro to regale her for the next hour with tales of John’s boyhood and adolescence, painting a picture of a person she did not recognise in the slightest.

  The sound of the door banging open and angry shouting from the hallway halted Caro midanecdote.

  “Anna! Anna! Where are you?”

  Within seconds, he stood on the threshold, leaning up against the doorjamb, out of breath, skin flushed with choler.

  “Sister,” he snarled.

  “John. Is Anna not to receive visitors? Do you want to wall her up alive until the child is born? Oh, and congratulations, by the way. One might have thought your own sister was worthy of confidence—”

  “We were waiting until the end of the first trimester. Thanks for calling. Goodbye.” He waved his hand towards the exit, unmistakably throwing his sister out of the house.

  “What has happened to you?” Caroline rose and approached him, showing no sign of intimidation except the nervous fingers clicking her pearls together round her neck. “Where is my brother? Where are you, John? Please let us help you.”

  “Help me by leaving us alone.” He roared the last three words so that Caro jumped and scuttled past him, out to the hall.

  “This isn’t right,” she called back, once safely out of his range. “I won’t let this rest, you know. You’re ill and you need help. Please see a doctor, John.”

  “Luana!” John bellowed in reply, and the housekeeper glided out from the room next door before the echoes had died. “Show my sister out, please.”

  Anna shrank back in the wicker chair, hugging her arms to her stomach, as if she feared assault, watching her husband stalk towards her. A tiger could not have been less terrifying to her.

  “S-she’s your sister,” she stammered, tears springing to her eyes. “You’re frightening me, John. Please.”

  “My sister,” intoned John, looming over his wide-eyed wife, “is a liar. And a fantasist. Got that?”

  “She…made a lot of sense to me. John, do you think…?”

  “I think nobody is permitted inside this house without my knowledge. Not my sister. Not your lovers.”

  He put his hands on each arm of the wicker chair and bent over Anna, his breath buffetting her in hot, furious bursts. She tried to evade it, putting her hands over her face.

  “I d-don’t have any lovers,” she sobbed. “Only you. I only love you.”

  John made an incoherent roar of frustration and swept all the tea things off the table with a discordant smash.

  “Love?” he shouted. “Don’t make me hurt you, Anna. Don’t talk to me about love.”

  He put a hand in her hair, as if about to rip it out at the roots, then seemed to think better of it, straightened up and stormed out of the room, leaving her to weep hysterically.

  When longer intervals began to intersperse the choking sobs, Anna heard the familiar sound of John going down the basement steps to his workroom. He would be busy there for hours. It wasn’t even near dinnertime. Why had he come home early? Had somebody alerted him? Luana perhaps?

  She tried to control her breathing and stood shakily, looking around her as if completely unfamiliar with her surroundings. Fear and shock had changed her, galvanised her. She wasn’t going to let this happen to her. She picked up her phone, took it into a bathroom, locked the door and dialled.

  Chapter Ten

  “You really think he would beat you up?” Liam, holding a shivering Anna in his arms in the corner snug of a Highgate pub, swallowed. This was all starting to look a lot like something he would have to take seriously. What would a real man do? A grown-up? In a situation like this?

  “He was so close,” whispered Anna. “I really thought…I was so scared…I think Caro’s right. I think he’s losing his mind. What can I do? How can I help him?”

  “You want to help this abusive dickweed? Why?”

  “Liam! He’s my husband. He’s my baby’s father. I want him well again, that’s all. The man who threatened me—that wasn’t John.”

  Liam sniffed. He thought otherwise, but realised Anna was in no frame of mind to listen to reason, or his version of it, at least.

  “I wish Mimi was here,” he muttered. “She always knows what to do. At least, she did, before she started being a bitch.”

  Anna looked up, pinching his thigh. “Hey! Mimi isn’t a bitch. Have you split up? Have you even seen her since yesterday? I can’t get her on the phone still.”

  “Looks like it. Anyway, never mind that. I’m sitting here in a pub with a married woman who’s scared to go back to her husband. What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t force him to see a doctor.”

  Liam thought about this. “You can, though.”

  “How?”

  “Go to the police. Say he threatened you.”

  “What? No! And he didn’t threaten me…not exactly.”

  “Look, it’s either that or you just leave him. Come and stay with me, or Mimi. Preferably Mimi,” he amended, untempted by the visions of an irate Stone turning up at his front door with a machete.

  “I can’t just leave him.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Anna. Look, I’m going to lay down the law. Listen carefully, ’cos it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You aren’t going back home tonight. There’s no way I’m going back to my flat and spending all night worrying about whether that mad bastard has lost control of his fists. Okay?”

  Anna, breathing heavily, considered Liam’s proposition.

  “I don’t want to lose him. I want him to be well again.”

  “Call the police on him. Tell them you think he’s a danger to himself and others. They’ll get
him assessed. He’ll get help. You can drop the charges once he’s seen the shrink. Come on, Anna.”

  “He’ll hate me.”

  “Maybe in the short term. But he’ll see that you were doing it for the right reasons, once they’ve sorted his head out.”

  “He won’t, Liam. You don’t know him. He just won’t.”

  But Liam was already dialling the emergency services on his mobile, determined that, just for once, he would forget the fear and do the right thing. Besides, it would make him feel slightly better about things going tits up with Mimi.

  “Stop it, Liam, stop it. He’s done nothing wrong.” Anna tried to wrestle the phone away, but Liam was resolute. Instead she took to her heels and made a break through the buzzing early-evening bar.

  “You’re taking your time tonight. Where are you?”

  “Just walking up your street. There was a bomb scare at King’s Cross station. Had to take a bus instead.”

  “Come in through the garden doors. Anna’s gone out. Meet me in the guest suite on the second floor.”

  Mimi pushed open the French doors and walked past Luana, who was mopping up spilt tea, thinking, Anna’s gone out? Where? With whom?

  But the curiosity was too mild in comparison with the growing sense of dread in her heart—and tension between her thighs. It was going to happen. It had to happen. John meant to possess her, and she was all out of excuses.

  Throughout the journey home, little sparks of need had shot around her body, as if someone was playing an erotic pinball game with her. It didn’t take a genius to work out that this must be John, toying with her through the psychic link, sending stimuli to her pleasure centre, preparing her thoroughly for the moment when he would have his wicked way. She had shifted irritably in her seat on the bus, burying her head in her magazine, hoping nobody worked out that her nipples were hard and her sex was beginning to waft its animal scent up into the close, sweaty air around it. She would cry, if crying was something she ever did. Instead she shut her eyes and concentrated on keeping still. He didn’t have her beaten yet. She still had it in her to resist him—she was a long way from the clinging shadow he had made of Anna. She was stronger than that, and he respected her for it.