Life Class

by Allan, Gilli

  Another voice impinged: ‘Why don’t you have some Reiki sessions? It does wonders for the January blues. Though I would say that, wouldn’t I?’ This time it was Liz talking to Rachel. ‘It’s all about energy and channelling. Sounds a bit airy-fairy, I know, but it really works if you give yourself up to it. It really releases creativity. The Reiki healer, me, will lay her hands on you to allow the energy to flow in through your aura and your meridians. It’s a kind of re-balancing.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Fran heard her sister say. ‘I have made an offer on a house, but the estate agent hasn’t been able to tell me anything. So I’m in limbo at the moment.’

  That Dory had found a house she actually wanted to buy was information not shared with her. It was yet another example of the wedge that had developed between them. But if Dory no longer wanted her opinion why should she care? Let her make her own mistakes.

  ‘When I was in advertising …’ Lennie had started a conversation with Bill, who was sat opposite. The voices around her chattered and burbled, rising, falling, and fading out.

  ‘I luv women,’ db had written. ‘I understand yr needs. Like nothing better than getting down + dirty. U B amazed what I can do with my long muscular tongue …’

  A repressed shudder rocked through her.

  ‘I say,’ Bill said. ‘Are you all right, Fran?’

  Fran came back to reality.

  ‘You’ve gone very pale.’

  ‘Someone walked over my grave.’ Dear old Bill. Her shiver had given him an excuse to change the subject away from Lennie’s increasingly rambling reminiscences about his glory days with J. Walter Thompson. As she returned her empty mug to the trolley, she became aware that the crotch of her pants had become damp.

  Back in the classroom, she fetched more paper and attached it to her board. For a moment she sat, just allowing the smells, the sights, the atmosphere of the room to seep into her. The sharp fumes of white spirit dominated the air as Bill re-rinsed his brushes. The smell of PVA mixed with it. Liz was kneeling on the floor, using a decorating brush to paint the clear acrylic medium onto a sheet of paper to seal it and make it less porous. This was Fran’s world. Doing art, going to a weekly class, was what defined her. It set her apart from so many other middle-aged women, whose only hobbies were reading romance novels, doing a bit of light gardening, and watching makeover programmes on TV.

  She glanced over at Dory, who seemed engrossed in her drawing. Fran had been surprised by her sister’s whole-hearted enthusiasm for an activity she regarded as her own. From tentative beginnings, her work had improved markedly. She’d hung on the tutor’s words in a way that was almost crawly – as if Stefan Novak was the oracle! Well, he was proving himself a bit flaky after all. It would be a result if the upshot of his continued non-attendance meant Sandy’s permanent reinstatement.

  As usual, the model was gossiping and laughing. She scratched her head, she yawned. Tilly was just being Tilly, but today it grated. Exasperated by the woman’s inability to keep still, Fran was unable even to map out the overall dimensions of the figure. She huffed and tutted, and erased what she’d done so far. The sheet of white cartridge paper was growing smudged and dirty. She started again, but again found her thoughts wandering, her hand and eye disconnected from her brain. She even began to consider giving up and going home. At least at home she could see if she’d had any more emails. Some more of last night’s conversation wormed its way into her thoughts.

  ‘I look at yr pic + imagine what Id like 2 do 2 U… Can U picture me … imagining U …?’

  Peter was out. A sense of freedom lifted Fran’s spirits. After putting the dogs in the garden, she settled herself in the study and switched on the computer, going first to Live Mail. She already knew what she would find there. There were a few emails from friends on the various committees she belonged to, probably enquiring where she was and why she hadn’t been to this meeting or that. Yet more were from various Reunite sites she was a member of. But the majority were from Mel, probably rambling on about her new boyfriend, Tyler. She’d better check.

  Before logging on to Hotmail, Fran deleted everything unopened apart from Melanie’s. From a quick skim of the contents of her daughter’s most recent message she inferred Mel was thinking about going to Bangkok with Tyler. She subdued the throb of disquiet. Reread it later, she told herself, typing in her Hotmail password.

  ‘Starting 2 suspect UR not serious. When R we going 2 meet up?’

  Fran’s fingers rattled rapidly over the keypad, typing out her answer.

  ‘It’s a lady’s prerogative to set the timetable.’ She smiled to herself and clicked send. Only moments passed before a reply came.

  ‘Cant w8 much longer …’

  Fran frowned. This was a game, not real life. Surely he didn’t really think they were going to meet? Did she?

  ‘You should exert more self-control,’ she replied.

  ‘I LUV control!!!! Sending link 2 give U taste. Lets do it 2gether!’ came back a few minutes later.

  Even though they’d changed provider recently, the broadband delivery had yet to show a marked improvement – it could still take frustrating minutes to load websites. Someone had suggested it was the telephone cabling in the house that needed renewing. Mentally prepared to wait, the image that unfurled in front of her eyes delivered a pole-axing shock. It was like a nightmare. Her brain could hardly make sense of what she was looking at. She shrank the window and without closing any of the pages in the prescribed order, fumbled to switch the system off.

  Chapter Twenty-seven - Dory

  Stifled and rebellious, Dory glowered at her surroundings. It was only her in this little flat. What was the point in doing housework? She wasn’t expecting to entertain anyone. If she didn’t care about the dust, why bother?

  It was unusual to find herself at home on a Wednesday, and it had rained through the morning in squally bursts. At last the showers seemed to have cleared away. There was cloud in the sky, but it was high and white and broken up into islands. The tree-clad slopes beyond the canal and railway line were hazy with leaf bud. Nearby, a small garden tree was already misted with delicate pink blossom.

  Jacket on, with a bag over her shoulder, she made for the towpath. Exercise, the pundits always claimed, was the best natural antidote to depression. The next best was St John’s Wort. Her bottle of sixty capsules was already half-empty. So why was she depressed? A long time had passed since she’d moved out of her shared home with Malcolm. Wasn’t she now experiencing the separation as a liberation rather than a failure? There’d been much to enjoy during those years, but living and working in the capital had its drawbacks too. And whatever happened, London would always be there.

  Her health had improved so much she could hardly recall how it had been before. She was doing a worthwhile job, even if the manager of the department was an authoritarian. And she’d found a hobby that was intensely rewarding. Even Dominic’s blood tests had come back clear. All these were positives in her life, yet a dark, formless cloud still hovered over her.

  Scarcely noticing the bite of the cold air, she walked along the towpath that flanked the left bank of the canal. The new development, where her flat was situated, dwindled behind her. An Intercity train whooshed past. Beyond the railway, on the far side of the canal and following the line of the lane that snaked back and forth up to the top of the wooded hill, roofs could just be seen poking through the lacy canopy

  On her side of the canal, the flat valley bottom, through which the almost invisible river cut its narrow winding channel, was ever-changing. Intermittently there were lengths of chain-link fencing. There were full-grown trees and a variety of wooden fences in variable states of repair. Sometimes, just a scrubby border of saplings and shrubs divided the path from a recreation ground, a scout hut, a strange little corrugated iron church, a few houses and then from a couple of fields – one with some sheep in it. A yellow constellation of daffodils spangled the green of the canal bank.

  S
ince mid-December, her doubts about moving here had abruptly dissolved. Scared, but breathlessly euphoric, she’d suddenly known what to do. Her future looked like a new adventure. Subsequent events had changed everything. Acknowledging that she’d allowed herself to get carried away, she now deeply regretted her foolhardiness. The estate agent had been unable to give her any news. In a way, it was a relief. Lack of information about the intentions of the vendor told her everything she needed to know. It was a relief too that having missed the first two lessons of term, Stefan had missed the third as well. ‘Due to a funeral this time!’ Fran remarked scornfully, as if it were final proof he’d completely lost the plot, was concocting excuses, and they’d never see him again.

  But Stefan did come back and Dory had to face him. He’d been teaching them now for the last couple of weeks, yet he’d said nothing to her other than an occasional terse comment on her work. His manner had been so remote that she’d not dared broach any subject, let alone his house. Perhaps he’d been so offended by her offer that he was ignoring it? Realistically it was probably best that they both continue to behave as if she’d never made it. Stefan was right. Kitesnest House was a white elephant. But … The earthy, resinous scent as she’d walked up through the trees behind it came back to her, and the childhood memory of meeting the boy there. Then another image intruded into her mind. Seen in her rear-view mirror, she recalled the front of the house, apricot in the setting sun, and the boy now grown-up – Stefan – watching her drive away.

  It was ridiculous to mope. All she had to do was wait. Her emotions would catch up with her logic. She was a woman on her own. Sinking such a large financial and personal investment into a house like his was ludicrous. Though she continued to flick through the property pages of local rags and glanced at the house details sent by her favoured estate agents, her interest had fizzled. Even more worrying was that doubts had reinvaded her mind about the whole project. Did she even want to commit to moving back here?

  And there was one other factor adding to her gloom. Despite patient confidentiality being an unassailable tenet by which she’d conducted her professional life, she’d blurted out personal details of one of the clinic’s clients. And why? Because she was cross with her sister. Recalling that moment, in the class storeroom, her cheeks still flamed. Her loss of control shocked her. Where had that rage come from? Fran was the emotional, volatile sister. She had always been calm and dispassionate. Even Malcolm, in the days when they’d been happy, had called her his Snow Queen.

  Since the incident, the sisters had been civil to one another. Dory had said sorry for losing her temper, Fran had said sorry for being a pain, but trips out together for lunch, for shopping or even just for a coffee, had ceased. Apart from the Friday-morning life class, her sister had become almost reclusive as far as Dory was concerned. She certainly hadn’t mentioned Dominic since the argument and, perversely, Dory almost missed her girly confessions. Her resolve to work on the relationship with her sister, to try to build it into an adult friendship, now looked laughable.

  Had there not been a witness, however, Dory wondered if her conscience would have been much troubled by her indiscretion. Fran deserved to know what a fool she was making of herself. What had made her outburst so mortifying was the identity of the man who’d overheard her. Before Christmas, it had seemed as if they could be friends. Since then, she’d insulted him twice. After saying how much she loved his house, she’d put in an offer that at best must have been a disappointment. She’d also been a blabbermouth, broadcasting intimate details about someone with whom he had a connection, in his hearing. No wonder Stefan was so disgusted that he disdained even to inform her that he wasn’t interested in her offer. But why did she regret so intensely the estrangement between them? There was no apparent reason. She did not understand herself. What was she even doing here? Why not cut her losses and return to the capital?

  To Dory’s left, another stretch of high, chain-link fence began, delineating the boundary of one of the old mills dotted along the valley. Lost in glum introspection, Dory was abruptly brought back to the present by a movement, a flash of disturbance at the margins of the canal. Was it a water vole? Even an otter? She’d heard they were re-colonising the waterways around here. Most likely it was a rat. Whatever it was, her attention was divided between keeping an eye on where she was treading and the spot where she thought something had shimmied up onto the far bank.

  The canal was beginning to curve to the left, obscuring what lay ahead on the path. There was another plop, slightly behind her this time. She twisted round but again was too late to see what had broken the surface. Turning back, there was a sickening, soft squelch underfoot.

  ‘Bloody wildlife!’ She stopped and lifted her foot to inspect the damage. ‘I am such a fool!’ Another voice cut across her disgusted scrutiny of the sole of her boot.

  ‘First sign of madness.’

  Five metres further on, a man wearing a pale T-shirt sat by the path. The short beard that defined the angle of his jaw and the mahogany burnish given his dark hair by the afternoon sun made him instantly recognisable. He’d been concealed by the bend and it was only the last couple of paces – those vital steps when she’d not been looking where she was going – which allowed them to see one another.

  A sudden jolt flipped her stomach over. Why was she being so ridiculous? What was the matter with her? Mentally squaring her shoulders, she continued her approach.

  Chapter Twenty-eight - Fran

  Just the sight of the computer had once filled her with a queasy excitement. Since the day she’d blithely clicked on that link, any excitement had abruptly vanished. An intensified queasiness was still there, mixed now with an irresistible compulsion to know the worst. Every morning, between opening her eyes and getting out of bed, she reaffirmed her resolution, but it was useless. Thank God Peter was out. His presence in the house would only ratchet up the tension she already felt. Berating herself for her lack of will, she switched on the PC and clicked through to Hotmail.

  After the first shock of opening up the link a few weeks earlier, she’d fumbled to switch off and obliterate the image. Could her eyes have deceived her? It may only have been on the screen for a second, but what she thought she’d seen turned her blood to ice. Staring blankly at the dead monitor, she sat stunned and immobile. Her heart thumped rapidly and waves of shivers washed over her skin.

  She’d never been a prude. In the books she read and the movies she watched, she enjoyed the sex scenes – if they were soft focus and well-choreographed. This was different. She could have sworn she’d been looking at a torture chamber – one where all manner of sexual depravity was taking place. But surely the image was some lurid fantasy drawn up from her subconscious and overlaid onto a scene of erotic make-believe? Uncertainty could only make it worse, her imagination fermenting it into a tableau of horrific grotesquery. She had to look again to be sure, then delete it from the system and dismiss it from her mind.

  Her head buzzed with impatience and dread while the PC booted up again. It seemed to take even longer than usual. Reproving notices kept popping up on the screen. Windows was incorrectly shutdown. An illegal operation has occurred. There has been a fatal error. She was not going to be reprimanded by a bloody machine! But the machine had the last laugh. This time it shut itself down, due to an unforeseen problem. Fran went into the kitchen to make a coffee. As she paced up and down, waiting for the kettle to boil, her legs felt suddenly wobbly. She sank down onto a stool, head in hands. Within minutes, she was back in the study.

  ‘Come on, Come on,’ she muttered, as the PC clicked and grumbled its way through its set-up processes. She wanted to get this over and done with quickly, but could almost picture the machine thumbing its nose at her. At last, the welcome page opened up. She clicked to Hotmail. Hotmail rejected her password. She must have mistyped. She retyped the password slowly, hitting the keys harder, as if increased pressure would somehow convince the site she was who she said she was. A
gain she was rejected.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Shitty shit shitting shit!’ she yelled at the monitor. It stared blankly back at her. Again, she put in her password, again without success. Fran took several deep breaths, rubbed her hands over her face, and tried calmly to consider what the problem might be. Eventually she hit the Caps Lock key and retyped it. Problem solved. The Hotmail page opened. ‘Now, calm down.’ Taking another slow intake of breath, she went to her inbox, reopened db’s email, and clicked on the link. The scene of sex and torture unfurled itself onto the screen.

  Now that she’d prepared herself, she was able to study the site a little more dispassionately. This time she realised the initial image was one of many. She scrolled through. All the photographs had been taken in what looked like a torture chamber, where the participants were engaged in an orgy of pain and excess. Some of them had chosen to display a lot of flesh, but it was flesh pierced with a variety of studs and rings and criss-crossed with chains, studded straps, and buckles. Other individuals were almost entirely swathed, even down to full-face masks, in suits of black leather or latex. Their unzipped genitals were sometimes all that differentiated the men from the women. In others, the clincher was in the footwear – a choice between studded biker boots or the thigh-high, leg-hugging variety with needle-thin heels.

  The tortured were restrained with handcuffs or straps around wrists and ankles. The exposed flesh was marked in broken and bloodied striations. The blood could be fake, but it looked as if the torturers – wearing masks and wielding whips – had inflicted real injury. In following images, hooks on chains pierced the flesh of the individual who lay beneath. It could all be some elaborate set-up, a series of theatrical tableaux – but for what reason? The way the flesh was tented away from the torsos, the way the woman’s heel disappeared into the man’s back made it look too sickeningly real.