He is here, and the games have started.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Don’t even think of staring,” I whisper urgently to Crystal. She is the one sitting with her back to the entrance of the pub, and her neck is in the process of craning around with her gawping.
“But I want to see what this guy looks like,” she complains.
I make a funny, hissing noise through gritted teeth, but she does stop, thankfully, and I continue with my instructions.
“Just ignore them. Let them get settled. And will you please act natural? Try to look like you’re relaxed and you actually like my company. Why don’t you try laughing here and there when I speak?”
So she does, and I immediately regret asking, for her rather loud ha ha ha-ing has me positively cringing at its fakeness. Hollywood will most definitely not come knocking for this girl anytime soon.
“Okay, okay, so let’s forget the laughing, shall we?” I say when she is finished. “Let’s just try and look like we’re having a scintillating conversation. Why don’t you tell me something about your childhood? She looks at me blankly. “Why?”
I push back the fresh tide of irritation. “It doesn’t have to be that, specifically, just tell me about anything you want. It’s just, I’m doing all the talking here, and I must look like a nag, or a bore.” And it looks like I’m paying you to sit with me, I silently add.
“Right. What do you want to know about my childhood?”
I only just manage to swallow down the groan of sheer frustration. “Anything that you want to tell me, Crystal. Anything at all. How did you get into this line of work? There must be something that you want to talk about. Do you have any hobbies? Any ambitions?”
I glance over at Luke, who has grabbed a table with his three friends, not five tables away from us, tucked around the side of the bar. Thankfully, I could still see him from where I sat, even if his face is in profile to me. He is such a handsome man – I can see why Tanya fell for him. He is in his late forties, his hair beginning to grey at the temples in the otherwise thick, lustrous, dark brown mane that is perhaps a shade too long for a man who holds such a powerful, corporate position. I suspect that his hair is his secret vanity, which is probably why he can’t resist keeping a little length to it.
He looks even more like Tom Cruise in the flesh, it surprises me every time I see him. It might be the glittering dark eyes, framed by the full, straight brows that lend his gaze such intensity. Or maybe it is his perfectly shaped, yet somehow cruelly curved mouth. The teeth are also strikingly similar – almost too-large, too straight, but they make his smile devasting, on the rare occasions that he bothers. Safe to say, Luke doesn’t appear to be the smiley type. And, like Tom, his nose is a shade too large, as well as being slightly – almost imperceptibly – bent. Neither is he that tall – five feet nine, tops, but what he lacks in height he makes up for in charisma and sex appeal.
I barely notice a single thing about the men that he is with – they are all just faceless city suits – one of whom is at the bar, ordering the drinks.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Crystal is saying, snapping my attention back to her.
I don’t know either and I don’t care. I just want her to drone on so that I can nod and laugh in all the right places, which gives me time to think, and to discretely watch him as I plan my next move. I can’t do that nearly half as well if I’m the one dominating the conversation.
“I mean, do you want to hear about how my mum was a drug addict and alcoholic living off state handouts, selling weed and her body to make ends meet, bringing me and my little brother up alone? Do you want to hear how my brother died? That he was knifed by a rival gang when he was just thirteen years old, and that my mum died of kidney failure on my nineteenth birthday? Is that what you want to talk about?”
No. It wasn’t remotely what I wanted to talk about. And not because I feel bad for her. I don’t. All this talk about death and misery and betrayal churns up my own bad memories. I need to keep focussed, it’s the only thing that has kept me going these past few years. Channelling my sadness into something else, someone else. Into Tanya.
Because everything is her fault.
My heart and stomach feel like they’re twisting into one big knot with the weight of my sadness when I think of my daughter. I close my eyes for a second, physically rocked by my grief. I hate thinking about her so much, I just can’t take the pain.
When I’m fully in control of myself again, I open my eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that you’ve not had it easy. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I just wanted it for us to look like we’re having an interesting, light-hearted conversation, that’s all.”
Her expression is glazed, unreadable. I don’t know if that’s because she’s upset, or bored, or if there is simply nothing going on in her head.
“What about you?” she asks.
“What about me?”
Instantly, I’m on edge. The last thing that I want to do is discuss my personal life with the prostitute I’ve hired. What am I supposed to say, anyway? That the wife of the man I’m planning to fuck – with or without you also in the bed – had an affair with my husband? After I found out, it drove him to take his own life, and, not long after, I lost my seven-year-old daughter in a tragic accident that was a direct result of my husband’s infidelity?
No. I could never say this out loud. Not to anyone, ever. Period. And especially not to this girl.
“So, what’s the story with you and this guy? I’ve been asked to do some pretty strange stuff in my time, but nothing like this.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or feel insulted. Instead, I feel nothing. Am I really so strange? I wonder. It’s true, I don’t interact with people all that much anymore, but for a hooker to call me strange is not something that I ever expected to hear in my lifetime.
“You’re an escort, aren’t you? Well, you’re escorting me. What’s so strange about that? Besides, it’s complicated.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that. Is this a revenge thing, or some kind of honey-trap? Or is it just your way of ensnaring a guy?”
“It’s probably better you don’t know.” Please, just back off, I think.
I glance over at him. I know I shouldn’t, that I need to play it cool, but I can’t help myself.
And, to my horror, he’s looking right back at me. My breath hitches in my throat and my heart hammers so hard and fast I fear that it might leap right on out of my chest and land with a wet smack on the tabletop, still beating so that it looks like a flapping, dying fish on the deck of a fishing boat.
There is a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, and it sends chills through me – the good kind of chills.
I’ve never known, up until this moment, if it was my subterfuge that made my heart pound whenever I was near him, rather than any genuine attraction. I didn’t know if my obsession with wanting to hurt his wife was confused in my mind with an obsession with him.
But now I know. I want the man, and I am shocked at the intensity of my desire. I drop my gaze first, feeling the way my cheeks are flaming…
END OF SAMPLE
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Two Doors Down: A twisted psychological thriller Page 27
