by Alexa Riley
And then I head upstairs, to the storage room at the far end of the landing.
Cindy said we don’t clean in there. She shrugged when I asked her what was inside and told me nothing of note.
Boring paperwork, she said, and yawned at me.
I no longer trust Cindy’s idea of nothing of note, so I step on inside and survey the boxes.
Paperwork. Lots of paperwork. She’s right about that. But there’s more.
A floral crockery set that I can’t ever imagine him using.
An old games console with about a billion boxed up cartridges. I can’t imagine him using those either.
The next box takes my breath.
Boys’ toys. An old stuffed rabbit. Some scribbles on coloured art paper. An old punctured rugby ball from a few years back.
His kids.
It feels so sad to see their things in here, all boxed up.
The boys staring out from the mantelpiece look happy and confident, full of life as they smile for the camera. I wonder how much he sees them. Cindy said not much. She said they’re over in Hampshire with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. I seal the box back up and move along to the next.
His wedding album.
It makes my heart pound, and I can barely look. I turn the page just once, to see them smiling on a lawn somewhere, his hand in hers as she smiles up at him. Blonde hair with a natural curl. Blue eyes. Pretty.
The people to the side of him must be his parents. His mum looks… stern. Her hat is this crazy big thing with feathers and roses on, and her smile is so obviously false.
Alexander Henley looks like his dad, but I knew that before I saw this photo. I knew a lot about his dad from browsing the internet. His dad is one of the greatest legal legends of all time. They quote him in text books. I know, I had them. Before…
Anyway.
I seal that box right back up again and move along.
The next looks older, much older.
And I hit the jackpot.
At least it feels that way. Like peeping into someone’s soul.
Alexander Henley’s old school books. Several old reports writing home to tell them how exceptional a student he is. How serious. How dedicated. How talented.
There’s an old clipping of him in a rowing team, his hair longer, with a hint of curls.
Some postcards with no writing on the back. Egypt. New York. Sydney.
And then, in the bottom, an old packet of condoms with one left in there. A dirty magazine that looks thumbed.
And…
Pictures of a blonde woman in a zebra print dress. Debbie Harry, I think. Her blonde bob blowing in the wind as she poses. There are loads of these, pictures of her, clippings from magazines, and a couple of old CDs.
It makes me smile to think of a young Mr Henley, cutting out pictures of his crush.
One is particularly tattered, with the sticky tape still on the corners from being on a wall. She looks so innocent in this one, eyes wide for the camera, in a pale pink dress with lipstick to match, her hair messy and at odds with her outfit.
He liked this one.
He liked her.
He likes blondes.
My hair is mousy. A nothing colour that’s never really bothered me one way or another.
I could be blonde.
I forget about that for now and move along to the last box.
More paperwork, but this one has been packaged more carefully. I have to lift the lid slowly so as not to damage the tape on the sides.
Divorce paperwork.
It gives me flutters.
The decree absolute is right on the top. Eighteen months old.
And underneath is a file of… correspondence… settlement figures that take my breath.
Emails back and forth. C.Henley to A.Henley. Unreasonable conduct.
I shouldn’t look, but I do. Of course I do.
It leaves me under no illusion that the divorce was in any way amicable. Her emails are vicious and persistent, accusing him of sleeping with other women, so many other women, having perverted interests… and…
My eyes widen.
…fucking men.
…wanting men.
Disturbed by childhood abuse, the text says, and a reply from him denying that. Strongly.
But he doesn’t deny the other.
He doesn’t deny fucking men, just denies that he fucked any other asshole in all the time they were married.
She tells him that’s bullshit. That she found the emails from other men. The videos they sent him. The chat logs from the bareback forum he’d been logging into from their office computer.
Shit.
I close the box up tight and put it right back on the shelf where it belongs. And I’m thrumming, tingling, filled with… nerves… and excitement.
Because I’m close. So much closer than I ever dreamed.
And my head is spinning, full of ideas I’m not yet aware of, just the beginnings of something… crazy…
Something really crazy.
Something…
Big.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MELISSA
AND SO IT BEGINS.
The goalposts move from playing with myself in Alexander Henley’s dirty sheets, to playing with him in them.
After the accident I couldn’t imagine myself ever making plans again, ever using my brain again, not properly.
I was living for Joseph and that was fine. I didn’t want anything else.
I couldn’t do anything else.
My dreams of being a lawyer were crushed into oblivion. But not my dreams of Alexander Henley. The fantasy of a life in the arms of the man I’ve been fascinated by for all those years held strong.
And now here I am. So close. So very close.
I’ll be a whole lot closer if I manage to pull off my crazy scheme.
It is crazy. It’s so crazy I should probably never speak it out loud, not to Dean and not even to myself.
But I’ll have to, because I’ll need his help.
I drop into an internet cafe on my way home, and the soup kitchen location I followed Mr Henley to is easy to pinpoint. New Start. A charity-funded initiative with three branches across the city.
Newtown Lane on a Monday.
A place called Eastspring on a Wednesday.
And Brickwood, where he went, on a Friday.
I call Eastspring in my finest telephone voice and tell them my name is… Amy… and I’m… looking to volunteer… on a Wednesday… this Wednesday…
The guy’s name is Frank and he seems really nice. He tells me they’d love to have me, Amy, and I should head on down for seven o’clock sharp, with some warm clothes and a smile and that’s all I’d need.
But it isn’t all I need.
I pick up some hair dye and bleach at the local chemist when I get off the underground, and dig out my makeup bag once Joseph is bathed and in bed.
Dean watches me sorting through my old lipsticks until I find a light pink, and the expression on his face lets me know he’s expecting an explanation.
“It’s nothing to worry about…” I begin as he hands me a coffee.
“If it’s to do with Henley it’s plenty to worry about.”
I ask him for his help with the hair dye, just so I won’t have to see his face when I explain myself.
He gloves up with an expression of impending doom, and the silence is heavy as I sit in the chair, an old towel slung around my shoulders.
When he’s safely out of my eyeline, I confess in one long monologue that I’ve discovered Alexander Henley uses escorts, about the paperwork in his drawer, about the porn I’ve seen on his browsing history, but I don’t stop there, rattling off all the things I’ve seen and all the things I’ve learned. Big things, small things. Any things.
I tell him I’m going to volunteer at Eastspring, and then, when the time is right, I’ll transfer to Brickwood, I’ll run into Mr Henley and I’ll introduce myself as someone other than his cleaner, and it’ll
be great… it’ll be just fine…
I take a breath. A long breath.
“What do you mean, it’ll be fine? Are you …”
I twist in my chair and I don’t need to say anything as my eyes meet his. His widen, the bottle of dye paused in mid-air as he realises what I’m really planning.
“No,” he says. “No fucking way, Lissa. Just no.”
“For Joseph,” I tell him. “I have to get him out of here, Dean. He’s only got me, and this place, and it’s not enough. Being a cleaner’s not enough. He needs more.”
“He has me, too,” Dean snaps. “And he’d rather you were poor than dead.”
Dead.
The word hits hard.
I take a another breath. Compose myself.
“I saw the guy’s card. Some swanky auctioneer from Chelsea. They don’t kill people, Dean, that’s crazy. They just pay them… for sex…”
“And you’ve never had sex. You’ve never been an escort. You’ve no fucking idea what these people are into, Lissa, swanky or not.”
“I want Alexander Henley. Being paid for it is…”
“Insane, Lissa. It’s fucking insane!”
“My only shot…” I close my eyes. “I’ll put the money in a trust fund, for Joe, if they’ll even have me on their books, that is. All of it, every penny, and I’ll keep working… keep cleaning… I won’t get carried away… I won’t…”
His hands land on my shoulders, and he squeezes so hard, as though he’s trying to squeeze some sense into me.
He can’t.
I’m a lost cause.
I know that much.
“For fuck’s sake, Lissa. What if it’s not even him? You even thought about that? What if it’s not Henley who rocks up in some seedy hotel room somewhere, but some slimy random. Some creepy old guy who’s paid to be your fucking first?”
The thought chills me, but it’s nothing I haven’t considered myself.
I gesture to the bottle of hair dye, and he resumes the application with a sigh. “I’m doing everything I can to make sure it is him who rocks up. He likes blondes. He had a crush on Debbie Harry when he was young, I’ve seen the pictures in a box of his old things and…”
“Oh, well that’s just brilliant, then. Dress up a bit like Debbie Harry and I’m sure it’ll be him who shows. Have you lost your fucking mind? Do you have any idea how fucking crazy you sound?”
I shrug, because it does sound crazy, and I lost my fucking mind a long time ago, before I ever got close to Henley’s bedroom. But there’s hope. Just a bit.
And that’s enough.
Money for Joe and hope for me. It’s as good as it gets right now.
He takes off the plastic gloves and moves away from me, staring out the window at the shitty street below with an expression like death.
I slip on the gloves without a word and apply the rest of the dye.
“I need to do this…” I tell him.
“You really fucking don’t,” he snaps. “You could do back to college, study like before.”
I shake my head. “I can’t and you know it. Not with Joe, and my head is… fried… I just can’t…”
“Your head is full of that fucking asshole of a man.”
“Better that than the alternative. If I stop, Dean, even for just one second. If I stop… hoping… if I stop dreaming… then I won’t get up, I won’t be able to breathe.”
He sighs, and his eyes are softer when they land back on mine. “Don’t say that, Lissa. You’ve got Joe, you’ve got me.”
“And I love both of you, but I have to do this. Please don’t stop me doing this…”
He groans. “Like I could if I wanted to.”
And I’ve got him. I know I’ve got him.
The victory doesn’t feel great.
I apply the last squirt of dye and wrap my hair in the plastic cap. “I’m sure they pay well, I mean it’s Chelsea, right? I’ll earn enough to make sure Joe’s ok. And us, we’ll be ok, too. I can get a babysitter and you can go back to college… you can have a life, too.”
“Please don’t pretend this is for me.”
So I don’t. I don’t pretend anything. I stop speaking, sitting quietly as the dye matures.
“Is there anything I could say to change your mind?” his voice is quiet. Heavy.
“No.”
He exhales a long breath. Shakes his head.
“Fine,” he says. “In that case, how can I help?”
ALEXANDER
I’M in relatively good spirits for an average Tuesday morning.
I put that down to the smell of fresh orchids. That and a hearty breakfast. Bacon and eggs on a nice thick slice of wholemeal. The breakfast of champions – as long as those champions aren’t overly concerned about their waistline.
Nothing a good session on the treadmill can’t remedy.
I tell myself there are a variety of factors contributing to my good morning, but there’s no illusion. That’s why I left a simple note this morning.
Thank you.
And then the afterthought. A radical impulse.
Please help yourself to breakfast.
It pleases me to think that maybe she’ll take me up on my offer. Maybe she’s sitting at my kitchen island right this minute, listening to the radio as she eats, enjoying the space considerably more than I have these past few years.
It’s not her cleaning standards that inspired the note, nor is it any one individual change she’s made to my space and routine. It’s her thoughtfulness.
Her thoughtfulness creates the illusion my house is a home again. That illusion is priceless.
I’m thinking about her mysterious presence all the way through my early client meetings. Wondering if the note made her smile. If she’ll leave one in return.
I wonder what her handwriting is like. What her smile is like. Whether she licks her fingers clean after she’s eaten.
I wonder what her name is.
I force myself not to look it up.
“Christ, man. And I really have to go on this ridiculous fucking speed awareness course?!” Mr Calder’s voice disturbs my equilibrium. “As if I haven’t got better things to do with my fucking time.”
His face is piggy and infuriating, his bluster doing its best to ruin my happy vibe.
Ungrateful prick.
I’ve got better things to do with my time than bail him out of his stupid fucking mistakes, but I’m not sitting in his office moaning about a perfectly commendable outcome.
“Unless you want to take your chances in court. We could call your mistress in as a witness, I’m sure she’d be able to tell them you weren’t all that drunk while she sucked you off at twenty miles an hour over the speed limit.” I smile sarcastically. “Take the fucking speed awareness course. You’re fucking welcome, Andrew.”
His mouth flaps open, and then he thinks better of a smart comeback.
He rises to his feet as I do, shakes my hand with a nod.
“Thanks, Henley. Much appreciated. I’ll get my secretary to book it in.”
“You do that.” And stop drinking and driving like a fucking imbecile.
I don’t smile.
He doesn’t linger.
The door swings on its hinges as he leaves, and his silhouette is replaced by an even bigger cunt. Just what I fucking need.
“Let’s talk.” My father closes the meeting room door behind him. He’s wearing a red tie today. I fucking hate the colour.
“Let’s not.”
I don’t even attempt to hide my disdain as he takes a seat opposite me. “People are talking about you.”
“Which fucking people?”
He laughs. “Ok, so I’m talking.”
“Talk all you want, I have no intention of listening.”
His eyes turn dark. “What in the name of holy fuck is wrong with you? Turning your nose up at Claude, ignoring your messages.”
“Ignoring your messages.”
“This silliness ends now. Claude’
s offered you a free sample. You will take it.”
“I’m not interested in Claude’s free fucking sample. I’m done.”
“Like hell you’re done,” he sneers. “You don’t know how to be done.”
“Speak for yourself, old man. I’m doing just fine.” I bristle with false confidence, my arms folded tight.
He pulls an envelope from his inside pocket and slides it across the table. “A gift. Take it. Enjoy it. I hate to worry about you, Alexander. You know how it makes me uncomfortable to worry. I may have to keep a closer eye on things…”
His threats mean nothing to me. “Are you quite fucking done? I have work to do.”
His eyes are steely but so are mine. “For now.”
“Good.” I get to my feet. Again. “Next time you want to talk, book a fucking appointment.”
“This is my office,” he snaps. “Don’t you forget it.”
“Retired. Don’t you forget it.”
We stare each other down for long seconds.
“Your mother misses you.”
“That’s a shame.”
“She misses the boys.”
“I’ll pass on her regards.”
He shakes his head. “You’re such a belligerent prick, Alexander.”
“We both know where I learned it from.”
“We both know where you learned a lot of things, boy. Call Claude. I don’t expect to have to come here again.”
“That would be nice.” I gesture to the door. “Close it on your way out.”
It slams with a thump that shakes the glass surround. His frustration makes me smile.
I put his envelope straight through the shedder unopened.
MELISSA
I HARDLY RECOGNISED myself in the mirror this morning. The bleach worked its magic, and the dye took well on top, and there I was, a new blonde version of me. I’ve never been blonde before. It looks strange, alien. Not that you’d ever know the difference under a hairnet and stupid cap.
Dean helped me cut my hair shorter, armed with nothing but a pair of general purpose scissors my mum used to use to open stubborn food packets. My new long bob looks pretty good for a home-done effort. A few random snips to vary the length and the look is definitely a little Debbie-Harryesque. Even Dean agreed.
I slapped on some pink lipstick and ruffled my freshly dried hair, and he called up a couple of old pictures of her on the internet and said he thinks I’ll pass.
