by Jaye Peaches
“Gemma, how’s it going?” asked Jason brightly.
Shit. I didn’t know how to start this conversation.
“Okay.” I paused. “I-I’m,” I stuttered.
“What’s the matter?” Between his words, Joshua screeched. “Shh, I’m talking to Mummy.”
“I’m meeting somebody for lunch,” I announced. My nerves were getting the better of me, and the wobbly legs started to give out again. With no seats, I slithered down and crouched on the floor, the mobile pressed to my ear and my back propped against a cupboard.
“Who?” he asked.
“Somebody I haven’t seen in years turned up at the gallery. So I’m going to catch up with him.” I tried to sound matter-of-fact, but it wouldn’t work with my husband.
“Him?” His tone dropped a few notches into colder territory.
“Yes. Not an ex,” I added, “just somebody I saw from time to time.”
“His name?”
“Dougie.”
“I don’t remember you mentioning him.” Jason knew the names of my serious ex-boyfriends and previous Dominants.
“I’d put him out of my head.” I had, and I’d hoped he’d stay there.
“Why?”
“Because,” I bit on my lip, “Dougie was his friend.” I whispered his name. “They were friends from his army days, and Dougie used to visit—”
“You’re not fucking seeing him,” Jason growled.
I should obey that voice, but I couldn’t. Even though Jason had told me not to meet Dougie, in my heart I knew I would, and for an inexplicable reason, it was important that I did.
“Sorry. I have to.” I hung up. My disobedience would infuriate Jason to the point of rage. He had taken Joshua to Blythewood for a swim, and I was miles away by the Thames in the centre of London.
I had less than an hour to entertain my gallery guests. I touched up my make-up, plastered on a fake smile, and stepped out into the fray. The next hour was one of the longest of my life.
I’d made a habit, over the previous weeks, of visiting the café for lunch. Not every day. Some days I brought sandwiches from home, and other times I heated up a snack in the kitchenette microwave. The advantage of the cafe was most customers preferred take-out and so there were always empty tables.
Dougie sat on a wooden chair with his back against the wall. With his arms folded across his chest, he maintained a watch on the door. There were two cups and saucers with a pot of tea between them. Leaving Gibson near the entrance—she’d wanted to join us, but I’d refused—I sat opposite him, keeping my distance.
“Thanks for coming.” He’d removed the jacket, revealing the tattoos on his arm had lost their vibrancy and colour. “I’m sorry I called you sweetie, back in the gallery. That wasn’t appropriate. Did you want anything to eat?”
His politeness seemed sincere, almost over the top, and I smiled as I shook my head. I couldn’t face food until I heard what he had to say.
“I got you a tea. I remembered you liked it.” He poured the tea—Earl Grey.
“Thank you.” I didn’t touch the cup. “How did you find me, Dougie?”
He leaned back and looked me up and down.
“Boy, Gemma, you’ve changed, so elegant and refined.” He pointed at my manicured hands, and I snatched them out of sight, under the table.
I said nothing. I guessed he didn’t know whom I’d married.
His skin was suntanned and wrinkly. I doubted he’d lived in the UK for a while. He cleared this throat. “I saw stuff about the gallery in the local paper. Wouldn’t have bothered to read it, but they had this little photo of the owner, and I recognised you. Couldn’t believe it at first. You’re married, obviously—Mrs Lucas. It’s been a long time, and you’re still incredibly beautiful. More so, with all your fine clothes.” His compliments came thick and fast, and, although a little over the top, they helped placate my nerves.
“Where have you been?” I stirred my tea.
“Abroad. Africa, Middle East, even South America. Mercenary. Paid to fight.” He grimaced.
“But not now?”
“No. Finished with it all. Kind of lost the way for a while. Then I realised I didn’t want to fight other people’s battles. All of them fucking lost causes. Zimbabwe was the final straw. I jacked it in and travelled a bit, taking in the world. Spent all the money I earned.” He guffawed. “Bloody stupid, heh? So I came back to London a few months ago.”
“And?” Something lurked behind his sad eyes.
“Tried to catch up on things, people.” Dougie fidgeted and cocked his head towards the watchful Gibson. “Who is she?”
“Security. She’s well trained, too,” I blurted.
“For the art gallery? It’s not quite the national gallery, is it?”
“For me. My husband considers me his treasure.” I laughed, a kind of nervous giggle that slipped out unexpectedly. “Seriously. He will be here soon, no doubt. He didn’t want me to see you. So you best be quick. You don’t want to meet him if he’s in a bad mood.”
“Oh. Avoid-him-in-a-dark-alleyway type?” Dougie grinned.
“No,” I sighed. “Not like that. More ruthless. You see, he breaks things. Generally, companies, sometimes people. Shatters them like fragile china. Then he puts them back together the way he wants them to be. That’s how he makes his way in life. So tell me, Dougie, what did you want to see me about?”
“Okay, Right.” He straightened up. “I did some digging around when I got back. You see, I lost contact with everyone because I left in such a hurry. I found out what happened to Macca.” He went slightly pale. I didn’t mind the Macca reference. That was Dougie’s choice of nickname, and it meant nothing to me. I could cope with it.
Dougie lowered his voice “I found out what he had done to you and the other women. I went to all our old haunts, the ones we went to: you, him, and me, those places where we met others like you and him. They told me he had hurt you bad and a crazy woman who’s locked up in hospital had murdered him. I wanted to come and say....”
“What, Dougie? I don’t understand. What did it have to do with you?” My patience wore thin. Jason would be on the warpath, and we were running out of time.
“We were like brothers. Macca and me. Inseparable. We’d saved each other’s lives a few times on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan and the like. Drank each other into oblivion in Cyprus. I knew he liked to do kinky stuff with the girls…women. He boasted sometimes about…those things. I wasn’t disgusted or anything, but it was his thing, not mine. We finished with the army, had enough of being ordered around for a pittance. I fancied the mercenary side, but Macca wanted to take it easy for a while, have fun. His kind of fun.”
I waited, tapping my fingers on the table, as Dougie struggled with his words.
He screwed up his face and leaned forward. “I wished I’d known about the incident that happened before he met you.”
“What incident?” I scraped my chair forward. Dougie seemed intent on whispering everything.
“We went on holiday together to Portugal. I got ill—ate crap street food—and stayed in the hotel room. He went to a bar and unfortunately, it wasn’t to his tastes, you know. He probably taunted them then they ribbed him back. He couldn’t help himself sometimes. I blamed his dad, the man was a racist gay basher, and it rubbed off on Macca. God, they picked the wrong man to wind up and when he left the pub, he went after one and beat him to a pulp. He came back to the hotel and told me we had to scarper quick, back to England. I puked all the way back on the plane.”
Dougie guffawed. “He just told me he had a run in with the locals. I didn’t know what kind of locals. I only found out the truth when I got back from Africa, from another mate he’d ’fessed up to when drunk.”
I didn’t know he’d gone gay bashing in Portugal, but it didn’t surprise me to hear he’d done it. “Then he met me, then what?” I glanced at my watch.
“He liked you. We both did, do. Me, I mean. We had good times, didn�
��t we?” He seemed desperate for reassurance.
I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose.” I remembered many fun evenings in pubs and clubs when Dougie came to visit, how the atmosphere had lightened. He’d never laid a finger on me, even when we were alone together.
Dougie fished in his pocket and brought out a creased photograph showing the three of us in a row on a pub bench. I shut my eyes and shuddered. I couldn’t look at his smiling face.
“Sorry, fuck,” Dougie exclaimed, and I opened my eyes to see he had taken the photo off the table. “Shit. I’m sorry. You see, I’m still coming to terms with what he did to you.”
“How do you know what he did to me?” I bit back my tongue—nobody understood what he’d done to me.
“’Cos, I went to one of our old haunts and met a doc or nurse, whoever, who looked after you afterwards, and she remembers it all, even after six years. Took some persuading to get her to talk, and I don’t know many details as she wasn’t that forthcoming. I know he hurt you badly. Real bad. Then I read up on the internet what he’d done with others, too.”
“Why didn’t you know? Six years, Dougie. You didn’t know for six years?”
He spoke in a tiny voice, his deep baritone brought down to an almost inaudible level of stillness. “He told me he didn’t want to see me again. That he would kill me if I went near him. He was furious. Broken-hearted, too. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Sorry, Dougie, you’ve lost me? Why didn’t he want to see you again?” There were tears in Dougie’s eyes, and it shocked me to see them there.
“I kept it a secret from him, the army, and my family. I even dated girls to cover it up. You see, Gemma, I’m gay. Have been and always will be. Crazy, I know, to be his mate, ’cos Macca hated them so much. I listened to his pathetic tirades. Yet, he was my mate. He’d saved my arse countless times. When he wasn’t spewing hate, he was fun, great fun. You know. You remember?”
He had been, or else why would I have stuck by him. I’d ignored his occasional bigotry and gone with the rest of the man because, when we started out together, he’d been loving, tender, and quite different.
I started. I could see where things were going. “You told him, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” He gazed at his teacup, which, like my drink, remained untasted. “I got drunk and...I don’t know why...if I’d know about Portugal, I would have kept my mouth shut. I loved Macca....” Dougie hiccupped, a small sob of despair. “I didn’t expect anything in return, I didn’t need him to reciprocate. I foolishly thought if he knew, he would end his spite, stop the stupid, hateful rants, and just accept us gays. Me. It was just me, after all. I wasn’t a stranger in a foreign bar chatting him up.”
For the first time, I wanted to reach out and touch him. He’d been a fool, but so had I. We’d both trusted the wrong man. “What happened?”
“Shit. He went mad. I really thought he was going to kill me.” Dougie buried his face in his hands before he continued. “He told me to get out and not ever come back or else he would kill me, and I believed him.”
I sat on my trembling hands. He’d said such terrible things to me during my assault, words I hadn’t understood. Now they started to make sense. “He said all kinds of nasty things about gays to me, as if I was to blame for associating myself with them, which I did, kinky folk do.” I spoke softly, aware of my surroundings.
“Don’t you see, he meant to say them to me, not you. All that anger at me, and instead of staying and trying to get him to see different, I went abroad, ran away. I am so sorry, Gemma. I had no idea he would lose it.”
I’d never understood what had caused my boyfriend to morph into a violent rapist. For years, I’d had an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, now, finally, the last few pieces slotted together. “He changed after you disappeared. In a matter of a few weeks, Dougie. He flipped. That’s when he started to hit me. I mean, you know, punch me, not like the usual stuff we did together.”
“Hell. I’m so sorry.” He looked up at the ceiling, and tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes. “It’s all my fault. If I’d shut up, not told him. We’d still be mates and having fun. You wouldn’t have been...all those women, and he’d be alive, too.”
He hadn’t said it, as if he couldn’t say the word. “Raped. Dougie, he raped me.”
“I know. Shit. It’s my fault.” He’d changed in a blink of an eye from a worn-out soldier to a heartbroken man. Was it his fault?
I inhaled deeply. “Actions have consequences, Dougie, but the guilt lies with him and nobody else. He had a history somewhere, something made him have a deep need to hate and inflict pain. He wasn’t a good Dom. I know that now. He didn’t do things right. He didn’t look after me or treat me well even before you left. The warning signs were all there, and I should have stopped seeing him long before you declared your sexual orientation. So don’t blame yourself, and I won’t blame myself, either. We’re going to put him behind us and get on with life. Aren’t we, Dougie?”
I spoke those words not to him, but me. There was a strong sensation within me of empowerment and acceptance. I had been a victim, but not any longer. I was finished with being a victim. My anxieties would bubble to the surface from time to time. My traumatic ordeal couldn’t be erased without trace. However, I had nothing to be ashamed of in the context of my behaviour or lifestyle choices. I hadn’t encouraged him to rape me—I’d withdrawn consent—and nor had Dougie incited him to violence. The terrible man had driven himself to his own destiny.
Dougie nodded and sniffed like a small child. Silence descended as we contemplated our conversation. I drank my lukewarm tea and poured out another cup. I was thirsty, and my head ached from all the difficult thoughts in my mind. They would have to be washed away, but not by me. Somebody else would do that for me.
It would have been easy to get up and walk out of the café, leaving Dougie in his morose place, but both of us deserved to end our brief friendship on a positive note. If Jason planned on confronting me, I’d rather face him here in the café than in my newly opened gallery.
“Tell me about your travels? The good things you’ve seen.”
Gradually, Dougie talked about the sights he’d seen: the pyramids in Egypt, the hungry multitudes in Africa, which had ended his days as a paid soldier. He laughed as he described trying to ride camels, became contemplative when he spoke about playing football with barefoot children in a mosquito-infested dirt field. He’d seen more of the world than me, and he intended to find a job working for a charity, so he could go back to Africa and help disarm those children he’d seen carrying guns.
“Any boyfriends?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said with a wry smile. “One day I’ll find the right man for me.”
“I hope you do, Dougie.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Jaguar pull up by the pavement. “He’s here,” I croaked, aware of my tightening throat.
Dougie watched through the window as the car door opened. “Should I run out the back?” He grinned, but the corners of his mouth twitched.
What Jason had done with Joshua? I couldn’t imagining him bringing our son, which meant he would have left him with someone at short notice—not an ideal choice. He wore the same jeans and rugby shirt when I left in the morning. Younger looking when dressed casually, nothing about him shouted billionaire or hard-nosed businessman. The man emerging from the car was my Dominant husband.
“Christ, That’s Chris Martinson!” Dougie jumped out of his seat for a second. “We did some basic training together. Shit!”
“Well, now he’s my husband’s chief of security and personal bodyguard.” I turned to face Jason as he approached the table. I smiled, not daring to show my reluctance at seeing him arrive. However, his face wasn’t blazing with angry undertones. Quite the contrary, he seemed worried, almost pale.
“Gemma?” Jason touched my shoulder and squeezed it.
“I’m fine. Dougie and I have been catching up on old times. Dougie, my husband, Jason Lucas.” I made t
he formal introduction as if it sanitised any wrongdoing on my part.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t shake hands with Dougie. “Mr Mottram,” Jason enunciated the surname with over the top clarity—he’d highlighted my ignorance—Martinson had obviously briefed him. If Dougie and Martinson knew each other, then it made sense Martinson had identified him from the CCTV cameras in the gallery.
Dougie rose to his feet, snatching his jacket off the back of the chair. “I should go. I’ve taken enough of your time, Gemma. I’m glad we’ve met one more time. I’m—”
I held up my hand. “Don’t, Dougie. Don’t apologise. It’s done.”
I rose to move out of the way, and there was an awkward moment as the three of us stood facing each other. I hoped Dougie wouldn’t make the mistake of kissing me, but he seemed to sense it wasn’t appropriate.
Dougie edged away from us. “’Bye, Gemma. Good luck with the gallery.”
“’Bye, Dougie. I hope you find what you’re looking for, too.” I waved, a silly gesture to make up for the abrupt departure.
With his jacket tossed over one shoulder, he didn’t look back as he headed for the door. He stopped by the Jaguar to exchange a few words with the waiting Martinson.
My legs had gone to jelly, and I sat again. Jason occupied Dougie’s empty seat. He examined the untouched tea on the table. “Have you eaten?”
I shook my head.
“You should eat something.”
He got up and a few minutes later came back with a plate of sandwiches and a fresh pot of tea.
“Where is Josh?” I stared at the plastic packaging containing the sandwich. I didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.
“With Martinson’s wife.” He tore open the wrapping and shoved it closer to me.
Martinson lived with his family in a house on Blythewood’s vast estate. “Sorry,” I murmured.
“You can make it up to him. A lot,” said Jason. “Eat.”
I poured out the tea with a shaking hand, and steam almost scalded my fingers.
Jason leaned forward. “Christ, Gem, you had me so worried.”
I expected anger, not anxiety, and his demeanour unnerved me. I shrugged, trying to underplay the morning’s events. “I’m fine. Nothing happened. We talked, that’s it.” I inspected the contents between two slabs of bread and grimaced. Pushing the sandwich to one side, I took a deep breath and gave Jason my full attention. “I didn’t want to disobey you, but meeting Dougie was important. I made a decision based on my instincts, and I don’t regret it.”
