She would still have to face him, however. She had one final day of freedom, time to sort out the mundane features of real life. Stripping off her clothes, which felt soiled with a more metaphysical than real dirt, she lay in bed and tried to sleep. It would not come for a long time, however. Instead, she turned from side to side. Her body ached—sometimes a yearning irritation in her limbs and also inside her, and despite herself she could not stop imagining Daniel’s fingers upon her, his arms around. Great. Now her bloody fantasies weren’t even tied to one location, but would accompany her wherever she would go. Eventually, however, after crying a little and then reprimanding herself angrily for being so stupid, she did manage to drift off. She was grateful that, this time at least, her sleep was dreamless.
Her limbs were truly stiff and tingling when she woke up. Rest had provided some relief, but she realised just how much she had pushed herself—and how much she had been pushed to the limits of her endurance—over the previous days. In particular, it really hurt when she walked and, when she sat down on the loo, her urine stung her bitterly. Damn! It was sore down there.
Kris was hardly sexually inexperienced, but for nearly two years she had only had sex—fitfully at that—with one man before her vacation. She had fallen out of practice. As she turned over some of the conversations between herself and Daniel over the previous days in her mind, she felt a sense of foreboding about some of the assumptions she had made about him. The truth was, she had very little real knowledge about him. Her old censor quickly closed in over her mind again: that was what she’d always been good at—blocking out unwanted thoughts.
A bath cheered her up considerably, and also provided much welcome relief to her body. Looking at herself in the mirror, she saw that the marks on her body were becoming slightly ugly brown blotches. Covering a couple of the more obvious ones around her neck with foundation, she dressed herself in a T-shirt and jeans and picked up Anne’s keys.
“How was it? Sorry! I know it was probably a mess. I’m such a slob, especially when I see how tidy you keep your place.” Although it was the middle of the day when Kris had knocked on Anne’s door, it was plain that her friend had only just stumbled out of bed, her makeup-less face bleary with sleep and her hair looking like a blond haystack. She made a cup of coffee for Kris, which the other woman looked at warily before she took a sip, more out of politeness than anything else. They had been friends at Saint Martins, and Kris had to admit that her friend, who had somehow managed to maintain something close to their earlier bohemian lifestyle, including working successfully as a freelance illustrator, sometimes caused her to feel just the slightest twinge of envy. Nonetheless, Anne was so generous with her friendship, it was impossible to maintain negative thoughts towards her for long.
“It was fine, really. It was just what I... needed.” As she spoke, a sharp pang stabbed Kris in the chest. It suddenly occurred to her that her lie hid a deeper truth. Anne, however, saw immediately that all was not well.
“Oh, sweetie!” she consoled, coming and sitting beside Kris on the sofa. “I can see that it didn’t sort everything out, but don’t let that bastard get to you!”
“Who?” Kris’s head shot up, her eyes searching Anne’s face for any knowledge she might be able to provide.
“Mark, of course!” At this, Kris had to stifle a laugh, which Anne misinterpreted as a choking sob. Pulling a tissue from a box on the table, she offered it to her friend.
“No, really,” Kris responded, gently resisting Anne’s kind hand. “It’s okay, really. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to deal with Mark. You know how these things are—they just take a bit of time, that’s all.”
“Men!” muttered Anne. “What bastards they are, eh? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them and all that.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You seem to get on pretty well with Andrew.”
Kris’s ploy was successful, and for the next twenty minutes or so Anne listed a litany of complaints, all of them minor—some even tender—about her partner, a designer on a magazine who, Kris knew, Anne really adored to bits.
After a while of enjoying the distraction, Kris asked in what she hoped was a casual manner: “When you were at Dalrigh, did you ever come across someone called Daniel Logan?”
Anne looked thoughtful for a moment. “Don’t recognise the name,” she said at last. “Mind you, I don’t get up there particularly often, and I can’t say that I’m a particularly active member in the community. They just like to nose in your business. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. He lives at Comrie.”
Again, Anne looked at her blankly, but something inside Kris prodded her to continue. “It’s the old croft, off the road before you reach the cottage.”
“Oh...” at last realisation began to dawn on Anne’s face. “That place. No, no, I don’t know him at all. Apparently some misanthropic old bugger lives there—bought up the place a few years ago. He’s not much liked, from what I can tell you. Why, sweetie? Did he give you any trouble?”
“No, not really.” Kris felt herself blushing. “It’s nothing. We had a brief run-in, that’s all.”
Anne immediately began to ask questions and Kris began to back down, realising that, after all, perhaps she didn’t want to share what had happened to her, instead concocting a story about a minor road accident with Daniel.
“You poor love,” Anne said soothingly, placing a kind arm around her shoulder. “You really don’t have much luck, do you.”
“No, I guess not,” Kris replied quietly.
Chapter Fourteen
On her way home, Kris popped into a chemist. Despite her embarrassment as she asked for some cream, she could not resist a sly grin. Daniel Logan may well indeed turn out to be a misanthropic bastard, but she had to admit that part of her was metaphorically punching the air that she hadn’t been so well and truly shagged since she had been a teenager. Actually, ever.
The mundane tasks she had set herself at home, however, could not entirely help her escape the sense of dread she had about returning to work. She unpacked the rest of her clothes, and for a moment held the pad she had used to sketch while at Comrie. Staring at the rough, dark cover, her fingers hovered over it for a moment but left it closed. One day she would return to it, but not yet.
Catching the tube to work the next morning, Kris’s stomach sank within her. Whatever benefits she had gained from her time away were quickly dissipating. If it had ended as some kind of romantic idyll, with some sort of declaration of their feelings for each other before, Brief Encounters style, they had to part forever, perhaps she would have been able to cope with it better. As it was, Kris felt that she had exposed herself completely and utterly to a man who was incapable of reciprocating, who had used her than abandoned her. A one night stand would have been less frustrating even.
And yet, while she thought of him on that final night, holding her down on the bed while he took her forcefully, Kris’s legs trembled and she almost stumbled as she held herself up on the shaking Northern Line. The man next to her, a nondescript, middle-aged city worker dressed in a cheap suit, apologised briefly, thinking that he had knocked her, and as she looked up and he caught her glance he smiled. She blushed and averted her eyes: could he see into her mind, to the images of her being filled in the most intimate and compelling way? Her skin prickled, and her old censor kicked in to preserve her from any further embarrassment.
By the time she arrived at her workplace, a faceless, stumpy tower block on Farringdon Road, her self-preservation was in full force. The most impressive thing about the company she worked for was its name, Hardy, Briskin and Sorrell, and even the sight of that made her want to be sick these days. Taking the elevator to the fourth floor, she stepped out into the clean, modern fake chic corridors, and said hello to Janice, the receptionist who was professionally pleasant to everyone who made their way into the building, whether visitors or staff.
“Did you enjoy your holiday?” Janice asked, smiling u
p at her courteously. The receptionist was in her mid-forties and a pleasant, slightly dumpy looking woman, who covered her plainness with rather thick makeup Kris bitchily observed to herself.
“Yes, thank you,” Kris replied, offering the minimum amount of small talk that would allow her to get past Mark’s office and to her own desk where, no doubt, the boring pile of work she had left before going on holiday had quadrupled in size.
The office employed just over forty people, and for a while Kris had worked as Mark’s secretary before, mysteriously, she had been downgraded to more mundane clerical work. Actually, she was pretty sure that most of her co-workers understood entirely the circumstances of her sudden demotion, especially as she had been excluded for some time from some of the more spicy gossip that took place around the proverbial water cooler. A couple of her colleagues had viewed her with barely hidden amusement, some of the others with faux compassion. Before she had left, she had not been sure which response she found worse: now, she didn’t care.
“This came in while you were away,” said Frank, one of the main claim handlers. He had been one of those who silently expressed sympathy for Kris, and she was sure that part of the reason for it was that secretly this pudgy, sandy-haired man in his fifties wanted a piece of what Mark Travis had been getting. Well, at least for the moment it meant that she didn’t have to deal with acrimony from another member of staff.
As he placed the piece of paper on her desk, Frank leaned down—a little too closely to her ear for her liking—and whispered. “You might want to keep your head down. The boss is in a bad mood today. You’re welcome to hide out in my office any time you like.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” she replied, flashing him a fake smile.
She logged onto her computer and stared dismally at the emails that had built up. With a shudder, she saw that a dozen of them were from Mark. When she had not responded to his message, he had obviously decided to leave a time bomb for her to return to. For the moment, however, she decided to ignore them and instead concentrated on entering the details of the claim Frank had handed her into the system.
Her respite was unfortunately brief. After twenty minutes or so, she caught sight of the door to Mark’s office opening and bent her head forward, hoping that by refusing to look at him he might not see her. It didn’t work, of course.
“Good holiday?” he asked, his voice constrained.
She lifted her head. Mark Travis was in his mid forties and stood just under six feet tall. She had thought him tall once, but that mistake would never occur to her again. He was, she had to admit, conventionally good looking, but where his face should have been graced with an easygoing maturity instead it betrayed a petulance that marred his looks more than Daniel Logan’s scars. She also knew that beneath his fancy suits, his body was starting to display the evidence of too many corporate lunches that, unlike his hair, he could not dye away.
“Yes, thank you.”
“What did you get up to?” Well, this was an improvement to the arguments that had taken place a month before, though she could see that any bonhomie on his part was entirely forced. “Anything exciting? I hope you didn’t get up to anything that I wouldn’t have.”
She hoped that her foundation covered the fading love bite on her neck, the only one that would have been visible above her tightly buttoned blouse. “Not really,” she said. “I just needed a rest. You know how it is.”
“Yes, of course,” he replied. His eyes flickered to where one of her co-workers was seated nearby, too obviously trying not to betray that she was listening in to the conversation. Kris realised, for the first time, how nervous her employer was. She’d had the evidence before her all the time, she realised, but it was only now that she could recognise it so clearly.
“Anyway, a few things came up while you were away. Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?”
Reluctantly, she followed him into his office and closed the door behind her. The room was the largest on the floor after the glass-fronted meeting room, with the desk before the window that looked out onto the street below. A computer was there and a couple of chairs arranged around a low, black-ash table, with shelves holding Mark’s golfing trophies in one corner.
She stood there while he sat down on one of the comfy chairs and he gestured to the one across from him. She placed herself on the edge of the seat rather primly, her hands folded across her lap.
“Did you read your emails?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t had chance yet. Frank got me before I could check them all.”
Mark looked at her, placing the tips of his fingers against each other. She knew it was a posture that he thought gave him added gravitas, but now she considered that it merely made him appear ridiculous.
“Never mind,” he replied. “More to the point, you didn’t answer my messages or my calls.”
“I saw one,” she said. “I’m sorry. I... I just needed a break for a little while.”
“Well,” he responded, a little gruffly though also, she thought, somewhat mollified. “I realised by the end of the first week that you weren’t going to respond after I tried to call a couple of times.”
Kris’s ears pricked up at this. “Sorry,” she said. “You tried to get in touch again?”
He frowned at this. “Yeah. Stupid really. Why, what was going on?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she answered quickly—a little too quickly, perhaps. For a moment she suddenly remembered that she had not had her phone for a few days. “The reception was really bad up there.” She almost added: That was part of the appeal, but held her tongue.
“How’s it going finding a new PA?” she asked.
“I had a temp in for a while, but... well, it didn’t work out.” He avoided her eyes as he said this. “I suppose I should advertise for the position.”
Kris nodded, slowly. She had a suspicion where this was going, but didn’t want to make things easy for him.
“Anyway.” His eyes were on her now, flickering across her face, trying to read her above his finger tips while his tongue imperceptibly licked his fat lower lip. She, in turn, tried not to shudder as she focused on his wedding ring. What on earth had she ever seen in this man? “No hard feelings, eh? Perhaps we should go for a drink some time. Work things out, eh? What do you say?”
“That would be nice,” she lied. All she wanted to do now was get out of this room. Mark, meanwhile, appeared satisfied with her response. He issued some petty instructions for work, a little loudly she thought, unless it was for Janice’s benefit more than hers. Nonetheless, his mood did not appear as bad as Frank had indicated: perhaps he was genuinely glad to have her back.
She, however, merely wished to leave his office as quickly as possible. Returning to her desk, she could feel her old, dull anger and frustration building up, though now there was an added edge to it. What was it with these men? Who the fuck did they think they were, and why did they treat her like some kind of bloody doormat that they could walk all over?
For an hour, she wasted time browsing the internet. She needed another job, that was clear, but times were tough and there wasn’t some golden opportunity for her just around the corner. Eventually, she knew, she would have to end up finding agency work. She had a feeling that as far as Mark was concerned, there was still unfinished business between them. On her own part, there wasn’t even a Mark-shaped hole inside her anymore. The emptiness was far deeper than that.
Over the next few days, she decided that the best plan of action was dull apathy. Real life had set its iron rule over her, and any form of fantasy would turn into punishment. That was a challenge in itself at times, however, and more than once while lying in bed or in her bath, she imagined a pair of strong hands holding her down, a mouth biting and kissing her while she was taken brutally, even a strap across her buttocks. Even masturbation was miserable, however. Her orgasms were a bitter reminder rather than a pleasure, and she soon found herself consuming a bottle
of wine each night to help her sleep.
At work, she simply tried to act in as professional a manner as possible, avoiding Mark as much as she could. She sent out a couple of messages to hiring agencies, and realised glumly that any work immediately available would pay even less than the pittance she now received. Twenty-eight years old, she realised, and all she had was a lousy, rented flat and a car, with virtually nothing else to her name.
When the weekend arrived, she had sunk into her old fug all over again. Damn it! she told herself. Forget that bastard. You went away so that you could create again. Remember that!
She had poured herself a glass of wine and was sitting in her living room. On the shelf above her, she spotted the grey covers of the pad she had taken with her. Since her return, she had not wanted to look at the pictures she had drawn, but she also realised that if she didn’t force herself to draw again, impose some discipline upon herself, she would soon be in exactly the same spot she had found herself for the past few years.
Placing her glass on the floor, she pulled the pad down. For a moment she simply looked at it, inert on her lap. Her heart was beating a little quicker, and there was an urge inside her to put it back, to lock up any memories. You don’t want to torment yourself any more, a small voice inside her head told her. Throw it away. It’s nothing—meaningless.
Yet she could not do so. Opening at the first pages, she saw her dream images, the birds circling far away in the sky, and then her sketches of the birdman, the ravaging creature with the young woman in his wings, his huge erection threatening her. Despite herself, she smiled at this, and unbidden her sex twitched a little, hungry at other memories.
When she came to the final picture of Daniel she had drawn, asleep in bed, she thought her heart would break. He was selfish, he was in so many ways more cruel than a weakling like Mark Travis could ever be... and yet, her lines had been drawn on the page lovingly, the curves of his arms, his broad shoulders and tight buttocks.
Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission Page 12
