“Where are you going?” he calls after me when I head towards the door.
“Back to bed. I have a headache.”
“Don’t you want to help me decorate the tree? I’m not going for a few hours yet.”
I don’t even bother turning around to face him when I reply. “Not really. Sorry. I feel really bad. I guess I’ll just see you sometime tonight. Although, please don’t disturb me if I’m not down and still sleeping this off.”
I can feel his eyes boring into my back when I leave the room. I can’t cope with him right now. All I want is to be alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TESS
Up in my room, I draw the curtains, strip naked, and get back into the bed. I have taken a couple of paracetamols and an Ibuprofen. I am lying on my back on the bed, scrolling through my phone in the darkened room.
I am spying on Isla Green’s profile on Facebook. I really shouldn’t be looking at her, but it’s a horrible compulsion that I am powerless to resist.
She is extremely beautiful. Not in the way of Alice, with the over-stylised hair, makeup and clothes, but in a far more natural way. She looks as if she is a small woman, with a petite, but curvy figure, vaguely putting me in mind of Kylie Minogue. Her long, flaming red hair appears as though it is only helped along in that vibrant direction just the smallest amount, for she has the accompanying, pale, freckled skin of a natural, strawberry blonde.
She is young, too – only twenty-seven – which sickens me further. What I don’t understand is how she can afford to live alone in a stylish, one-bedroomed flat in the centre of London – Shane doesn’t pay his employees anywhere near enough for that.
I figure that she must have inherited money. Unless she has a sugar daddy type in her life. Or my husband pays for her flat, as it is perhaps their little love nest…
Stop it, I chide myself. Just stop it. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m letting the jealousy and paranoia take hold, and all because of one, probably innocent text.
Sighing, I drop the phone next to me on the bed and stare up at the darkened ceiling, trying to still my shirling thoughts. It strikes me then that I’m not giving a second thought to Alice.
Why aren’t I jealous of her? I wonder.
Some instinct tells me that whatever they had, it’s over now. Isla is the one I need to watch. Alice is – bizarrely – safe.
A fresh shard of pain stabs in my skull, making me wince and hiss, my hands flying up to palm my eyes. I need to sleep. Despite the fact I’ve taken enough over-the-counter drugs to fell a horse, the headache is persistent. The only thing I’m good for in this state is sleep. Lots and lots of sleep to wipe the slate clean and start again.
You shouldn’t have looked at Isla’s profile, I tell myself. It isn’t healthy. I’m not healthy…
I am cross with myself as I snuggle down in the soft bedding. Right then, I wish I was anyone other than myself.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ALICE
Jack’s reply comes through on my other phone when I am less than ten minutes away from his car lot on the bus.
Yes, I am alone, he has texted back from his equally secret, ‘pay as you go’ phone, which we bought together so that we might be better able to conduct our affair in secret. He goes on to inform me that Ingrid, his dowdy receptionist, has gone home for the day. Jack has been extremely careful to keep me secret from his wife, and these phones were all his idea.
Good, I hastily text back. Because I’m on my way, anyway. I’ll be there in ten.
I place the phone back inside my handbag and gaze unseeingly out of the bus window at the rapidly darkening sky. I love it when the nights draw in, I have always felt that the darkness is a friend, not the enemy. I so enjoy being at one with the shadows.
What I don’t love is the fact this bus still has a handful of obnoxious school children on it. Most kids seem to have made it home for the day as it is gone half four, but I have to suffer these pubescent stragglers, with their air of pathetic self-importance, as if they have invented the concept of rebelling. The way the two girls wear their uniforms, with their blue skirts hitched up, and their shirts unbuttoned to reveal their burgeoning cleavages makes me feel old and angry. It is true what they say, that youth is wasted on the young. It is clear to me that those two girls will amount to nothing, and will most likely be pregnant by the age of seventeen, in order to secure a council house on some crummy estate. I want to tell them that they’re not all that, that this is as good as it gets for them. That they will be fat, ugly, and old before their years by the age of twenty-two.
I don’t, of course, and fix my gaze on the bleak, concrete scenery of the industrial estates I’m passing, waiting for my stop.
*
I find Jack alone in his office on the car lot. His ‘office’ is nothing more than a glorified mobile home from which he conducts his business and closes sales.
It is also were he regularly has sex with me.
His car lot is in the heart of this particular industrial estate, sandwiched between a filter factory and some storage units. I say sandwiched, but that is perhaps not quite the right word, as his place of work feels so isolated, so forlorn and forgotten. No one pays a blind bit of attention to his car lot, and it isn’t overlooked by the other businesses.
I rap once on his ‘office’ door, and push it open without receiving an invitation to enter.
“Busy day?” I ask him.
It is a bitchy question, even if my tone is sickly sweet. It’s no big secret that he is running this business into the ground, and he is never busy.
There are times that I almost feel sad for his wife, financing this sorry mess, this sorry excuse for a business and a businessman. The truth is, Jack is a fucking gorgeous-looking, charismatic man who can talk the talk, but can’t walk the walk. Dear Jack couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
“It was a busy day, actually,” he replies, somewhat defensively. “I think I might have sold two cars.”
I raise a quizzical eyebrow. “Might have sold?”
He chooses to ignore my dig, as his lust for me far outweighs his irritation. As such, he mostly chooses to forgive anything unpleasant that comes out of my mouth.
“Why don’t you take off your clothes and get your sweet arse over here?” he says.
He is so arrogant, so cocksure of his good looks and sex appeal, that he doesn’t get up and come over to me where I stand just inside the entrance. Instead, he elects to lace his hands behind his head, leans back in his chair and places his feet on the dark oak desk, crossing them at the ankles.
He is so hot. But, as devastatingly handsome as he is, I can’t help in that moment but think of Shane. I don’t know why I should, and it irritates the hell out of me. But then, that stupid man is never far from my mind, seeing as he is the bastard that broke my heart.
Fuck Shane. He will pay for what he did to me.
Unsmiling, I hold Jack’s predatory gaze. Now I am angry at Jack, as well as Shane. Men. They are all users.
My pulse is slow and even, my hands steady when I reach up for the belt of my trench coat, knotted firmly at my small waist. I allow the garment to slide off my shoulders, pooling around the backs of my ankles, revealing the simple, knee-length, square-necked, navy-blue dress beneath.
“Lock the door,” Jack orders, and even from this distance, I can see that his usually pale-blue eyes are near black with the dilation of his pupils. A girl could fall into those bottomless black pits and never find her way out again.
But not me. I could never love a man like Jack, and therefore it isn’t possible for him to hurt me. I turn around, go to the door, turn the key in the lock and face him once more. As I do so, I cast a surreptitious glance at the two, small windows overlooking the forecourt, making sure that the fake-wood blinds are down. They are; we are all alone, safe from prying eyes.
Without saying a word, I reach around to my side where there is a concealed zip and ease it all the way from armpit to hip. Now it is
easy to slide the dress down my body and I slip out of it, gracefully kicking it to one side.
Jac’s gaze is upon me, hungry and aggressive. He is silent, unmoving, his feet still perched on the desk, his hands behind his blonde head.
As if I have all the time in the world, I saunter over towards him, the small heels of my elegant court shoes click-clacking on the cheap, laminate wood floor. I stand before the wide oak desk, my gaze fixed upon my lover. He hasn’t moved, and he watches me through heavy-lidded eyes.
I know exactly what he’s doing – he’s trying to make me nervous, to assert his sexual dominance over me. It doesn’t work. I know I look good, that my beauty holds power over him, as much as he pretends otherwise. Sadly, I’ve known men like him my entire life, and it’s like water off a duck’s back. He’ll find no chink in my armour, sexual or otherwise.
“Take off your underwear,” he says gruffly. “But leave on your shoes.”
Smirking at him, enjoying his pathetic attempt of upmanship, I reach up behind my back and unhook my flimsy lace, black bra, letting it fall where it may. Next, I slide my matching knickers down my thighs, and step out of them. I feel no shame, only a mild surge of arousal at my own beauty.
Finally, Jack lowers his feet from the table and stands up in one fluid motion, like a pouncing lion. I’ve always admired the way Jack moves, he is so graceful, so predatory.
Before I can even let out a small gasp of surprise, he is on me, bending me over the desktop, one hand holding me down by my shoulders, the other roughly exploring every contour of my offered-up arse.
I love it when he treats me rough like this. Unlike Shane, rough doesn’t equal clumsy, and despite the assertive handling, he still touches me in all the right ways, all the right places.
By the time he has unzipped the crotch of his snug-fitting jeans, for Jack never wears a suit to work, I am more than ready to receive him. He slides into me, holding me in place over the desk, pinning me down like a butterfly on a board.
And then he is ramming into me at speed, my breasts mashed painfully – yet satisfyingly – into the desktop. Our coupling is aggressive, animal, my orgasm perfectly timed to his, as short and as sharp as the act itself. If Jack were a lion he would undoubtedly be biting my neck, forcing me into a submission that is already willingly given.
As soon as he is done, his weight lifts from my back. By the time I manage to prise myself from the desk and turn around to face him, he is tucked in and zipped up, standing there as if nothing has just transpired between us.
“You are amazing. That was amazing,” he says breezily, and the admiring tone in his voice is painfully apparent, as much as he tries to hide it. Jack is extremely into me – he may even love me, as much as a man like Jack is capable of loving anyone.
“Yes, it was,” I reply, perching on the edge of the desk, legs crossed. “Be a darling and get my handbag.”
It is nearer him than me, and obediently he bends down to pick it up, passing it to me.
“Thanks.”
I open it and pull out my cigarettes, offering him the packet, first. His wife doesn’t know that he sometimes smokes – it is just one of the many secrets that he keeps from her.
“I really shouldn’t,” he says, taking one.
I smirk at him, then I too, tap a cigarette out of the packet. I go to light it, but Jack closes the gap between us, his big hand removing the lighter from mine.
“Let me.”
He plucks the cigarette out of my lips, places it in his mouth along with his own then lights them, popping mine back between my parted lips. We smoke in silence for a moment, just enjoying each other’s company.
I feel Jack’s gaze upon me, and I bask in his admiration. The fact I have a good body aside, Jack says he is really turned on by how comfortable I am in my own skin. His unfit, out-of-shape wife never shows flesh in front of her husband – not that Jack would want to see it, anyway.
Jack’s gaze doesn’t leave my body and I close my eyes for a moment as I smoke, pretending that I hardly notice or care. Subtly, I arch my back, sticking out my breasts, sighing contentedly.
“I wish…” Jack begins, then stops.
My eyes snap open, my head drops back down and my gaze locks with his.
“You wish what, Jack?”
He looks suddenly embarrassed. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“Everything you think matters, Jack,” I say softly, in a rare display of affection. If my calculations are correct, he will be disarmed by this, especially with the way it is coupled with my nudity.
“I wish I had met you, first. It’s just, I can’t get you out of my head. There is something about you… You’re amazing, that’s all,” he finishes lamely.
“It’s not impossible,” I say.
“What’s not impossible?”
Although, we both know perfectly well what I am talking about.
“You and me,” I continue.
He is looking at me strangely, now. Warily, perhaps.
“And how do you work that one out?”
“I have access to money,” I say simply. “And we all know that’s the only reason you stay with your wife.”
He bristles slightly at that. I’ve dented his ego, calling him out like this. Men. They are such sensitive creatures.
“It’s not the only reason, we do have a child together – a child who is at a very vulnerable age. I don’t know what it might do to her if I left her mother.”
“Kids are resilient,” I say, thinking of my own, traumatic childhood, shunted as I was from one foster home to the next, more often than not finding myself in abusive environments, both mentally and physically.
Yes, that shit leaves a scar, but you get past it. You toughen up. If her parents separating is the worst thing that could ever happen to his spoiled kid, then I would say that she was doing pretty well.
“It would kill her,” Jack says. “I couldn’t do that to my daughter. Maybe when she’s a few years older, but not now. Not yet.”
I don’t think I believe him. He only stays with his wife for her money and social standing – it’s as plain as the perfect nose on his handsome face.
“I mean it, Jack. Money is no problem.”
“Are you a secret millionaire and you just haven’t told me?”
I inhale deeply on the cigarette before I reply, holding the smoke deep in my lungs. “You don’t know me Jack. You think you do, but you don’t.”
“Oh, I know you,” he says softly. Seductively. He reaches out to brush a wayward lock of dark hair off my forehead. “I should say that I know you very well.”
“You reckon?” I reply, watching him from beneath lowered lashes in a way I know drives him crazy.
“I do reckon. And I like what I know.”
“How much do you like me, Jack?”
“A lot,” he says, his hand trailing down to my shoulder, lightly stroking my upper arm, his thumb grazing the side of my breast.
“How much?” I resist.
“Too much. You know it’s too much.”
“Enough to kill for me?” I ask.
His hand stops dead on my arm. “What?”
“Would you kill your brother-in-law for me?”
“My brother-in-law?” he repeats dumbly. Incredulously. “Baby, that isn’t funny. Why the hell would you even say that?”
His indignation is genuine and I wish that I could retract the words, but it is too late now – they are out there, sordid and evil. And just like that, I’ve realised I’ve misjudged him; he is a deceitful, scheming bastard, but he isn’t a killer. This disappoints me greatly.
I drop my half-smoked, smouldering cigarette into his empty coffee mug and slide off the table, retrieving my bra on the ground. Hastily, I wriggle into it, then scoop up my dress, pulling it over my head. I pick up my knickers and chuck them at him.
“Keepsake,” I say, walking over towards the door where my coat still lays discarded on the ground.
Jack catch
es the underwear, still looking bemused.
“But why would you even say that?” he asks. “How in God’s name has Shane ever crossed you?”
That is definitely a topic that I don’t want to get into, and I shrug on my trench coat, keeping my back turned to him. I turn the key in the lock. “Goodbye, Jack. That was fun. I’ll call my own taxi.”
He doesn’t offer me a lift home – not that I was expecting him to, but I’m suddenly tired of all of this, and of him.
And I’ve said too much to him. Jack is now a liability.
CHAPTER TWENTY
TESS
I awake with a start from a dreamless sleep; a sleep so deep and absolute I find myself gasping down air as if my lungs have ceased to work.
God, is my first thought, as I take in the familiar surroundings of the darkened spare room. How long have I been asleep this time?
I am so dazed, so disorientated I can’t even grasp if it is morning or evening, yet alone what time it might be. The only thing I know for sure is that it can’t be night, for there is daylight behind the transparent curtains. But whether it is Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, I couldn’t say.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table in the gloom of the bedroom and the screen flares into life with the swipe of a finger. The time and date read 07.49, Wednesday 15th December. This means that I have been sleeping for over twenty-four hours. The last time I was up and about was yesterday morning, fiddling with the Christmas tree in the living room with Shane.
Jesus, what in the hell is wrong with me? I decide that I really should go and see a doctor about these damn migraines, for I can’t keep on losing great chunks of time like this. It just isn’t right at all. Maybe I should talk to Kirsty, see what she says about it.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, aware that I am naked and my hair is ever-so-slightly damp. There is nothing remotely odd about the damp hair per se, it’s just, I only have the dimmest recollection of showering in the spare room’s en-suite. I seem to remember doing so after a long nap. I remember that it was dark outside by the time I hauled myself into the shower…
In Spite: A terrifying psychological thriller with a shocking twist you won't see coming Page 12
