The tape ends here. I stare at the blank screen for a long time, still in shock. His story says broadly two things – that he suffered, and that he tried to cover it up to prevent others from suffering too.
I feel tears sting at the thought of how many times he could have asked for help. Instead he took everything on himself.
This happened last week.
So that’s what he’s been doing, that’s what’s taken up so much of his attention this last couple of weeks. That’s what’s haunted him.
He’s been psyching himself up for this, detaching himself from his companies and all the people closest to him, preparing to fight his demons.
And face not just the ordeal of public exposure but the wrath of his family.
His emotion may be under strict control but it’s still there
.
I shudder to think what it’s cost him to hide it, to rise above the humiliation he’s had to replay, all to help out a semi-literate kid whose mom cleans in the building where I work.
And he took apart an empire to do it. For all the flowery management-speak about ‘stepping away’ and ‘taking the business in a new direction’ this is in effect what he’s done. It’s probably the business equivalent of jumping off a cliff. And if not complete meltdown, it must mean major upheaval.
What must he be going through?
As I get ready for bed I stare into the mirror, appalled at my reflection. I feel a rush of guilt.
Is this because of me?
When I asked him to help the Formans, was this the first thing that sprang to his mind?
The face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships. The face staring back at me just destroyed an empire, and possibly the man at its head.
And now the real horror strikes me – maybe I was right the first time. Maybe that
was
a suicide note, or the business equivalent of a suicide note – of an extraordinary man at the peak of success, throwing it all away in a desperate bid to stand up for somebody with nothing.
After I get into bed I stare into the darkness, both real and imagined. Sleep is impossible. Finally I sit up and open my laptop.
In times of trouble some people turn to music, others to drink. I’m supposed to be a poet. I turn to poetry. But where’s poetry when you need it? It’s no help to me now.
I stare into space and all I can see is Darnley, elegant, stunning, surrounded by his clan, lord of all he surveys, asking me to keep smiling.
Where is he now? He planned this as long ago as last week, maybe longer. Is he hiding somewhere? Is he – I hardly dare frame the thought, but I must – is he
dead
? I thought he’d dealt with his past. But maybe with that kind of past, success – even love – takes its toll.
Maybe the past finally dealt with him.
Maybe I freaked him out.
Maybe I wasn’t enough.
Now I’m mad at myself. I’m just a teacher. How can I possibly help someone like him?
What was I thinking?
And as I stare into the void words float past, singly at first and then in clusters. They flutter round my head like Snow White’s bluebirds, organising things, tidying up scattered thoughts. Ideas form like clouds, melting and fusing into rhymes and shapes.
Words don’t solve anything. They’re just pretty patterns. There’s little comfort in their joy, but they’re what I do.
I fire up my laptop and start to type.
I look into space and see only the stars.
I look at the stars and see only your face.
A void yawns before us. Who knows where it ends?
I thought we were lovers, I thought we were friends.
We’re too far apart now, no bridge in between.
The future we face is unknown and unseen
…
It’s a ropey start but soon the words flow, unstoppable as tears. I type for a long time, until I’m all typed out, and stare at the last line I’ve written.
I don’t want to own you, just want you to say
–
I frown. What, precisely,
do
I want him to say? That he loves me? That he wants me?
He says so all the time, in every look, every touch, every angry reaction to things I do that he can’t understand. If I don’t know it now I never will.
He tells me simply by trusting me – to keep his secrets, to play by his rules, not to freak when he goes off-plan.
If I never see him again and this is some scary way of saying goodbye then that’s what he’ll leave me, this rich store of memories that prove how much he loved me and trusted me, how hard he tried to see things my way and love me the way I want to be loved.
Which is nothing like the way
he
wants to be loved …
I take a deep breath, run weary hands through my hair and close the lid. I’ll finish it tomorrow.
Something will come.
Maybe I’ll wipe it.
I stow my laptop and shuffle down under the covers, chilly and tired.
Next morning I wake early with a sore head and a dry throat. I take a shower, soothing myself under the hot jet, letting it warm my aching, weary muscles.
Afterwards I feel fresher. I reach for a robe and towel my hair. Somewhere in the house I can hear his housekeeper, already at work. I call down for some tea, open my laptop while I wait for it and scan through my poem with a critical eye.
Actually, for a first draft it’s not that bad. In fact, now I see it fresh on the page, it’s nearly there. It just needs an ending …
With a sinking heart I scan down to the end of the file and then freeze. A couple of spaces below the last line I’ve written, there’s a new one.
Hey. Don’t give up on me yet. I’m not far away.
I stare. I don’t believe in ghosts.
This only happens in horror movies. Not in real life.
Not to me
.
I must be going crazy.
I snap down the lid, take a few deep breaths and then answer the door to his housekeeper. She sweeps in with a cheerful, early-morning wake-up grin and a fragrant tray of tea and toast, sets it down on the side and hurries out again.
I pour a cup, take a sip and scald my lip in my hurry to do something normal and prove to myself I’m awake.
Then I open the lid again, slowly this time in case it bites.
The line’s still there.
Just like he might have said it, a million miles away from what I’d write – but a perfect ending.
At that moment there’s a small sound in the room behind me.
‘I finished your poem. Might need a little work.’
‘
Darnley?
’
He’s standing in the doorway, grinning.
He’s alive.
And he’s here. I launch myself at him and we cling together, me sobbing, him laughing.
I thought I was crazy.
I am now.
When we’ve raided the tray he pulls me down onto the bed beside him.
‘We have to talk.’
With his arm round my shoulders I lean my head on his and slip my hand into his robe. I finger the waistband of his boxers, thrilling to the hard muscles underneath. ‘You were here all the time?’
He kisses me on the cheek. ‘I came in late. I tried not to wake you. I checked on your laptop to see if you’d played the disc and found your poem. Did I mess it up?’
He looks so stricken I fling my arms around him. ‘No, no. It’s perfect. But what happens now? Will there be a trial? Will you have to testify?’
He looks away. ‘No one knows yet. They’re still squaring up. Probably, if Lola Forman won’t settle. But that’s not what I want to talk about.’
As he outlines his plans I’m hardly listening. I’m so proud of him – proud and sad, because what he’s doing in the midst of all this personal stuff is setting out a detailed, carefully worked-out routine for me. He’s thought of everything.
Once more he’s lying low from the press so as to play down the change of leadership in his former business and protect its market share. His new work means travel at short notice and patchy contact. I’ll have to adjust to sudden absences, fleeting visits.
Once more, he insists I’ll need protection to avoid press intrusion over the next few days. That means staying here.
I’m unsure about this but it certainly solves my immediate problem. With Eldon and Billy using her apartment I need somewhere to live.
I mount a feeble protest. ‘This place is way too big for me.’
He shrugs. ‘The staff need the work and you need them to do it. You work full time. You can’t manage a place this size. Plus the house needs a resident and I need you. It’s a no-brainer. And here.’ He tosses me a credit card. ‘Use this. There’s half a million on it. Get anything you need, pay for anything you like. Use it for expenses for clothes and fares. You may have to travel unexpectedly.’
‘
Travel?
Why?’
His eyes gleam as he parts my robe and pushes me back down. ‘Because I might fancy a fuck. Or a blowjob. Or a poem. I might need you without warning, just for some intelligent conversation, or to watch me shave. How should I know? I might just feel like doing this.’ He leans over me, pinning my arms in my loosened robe and fastens his mouth on my left breast with such force I writhe.
He looks up with a grin and then does the same to the other breast, teasing my stiffening nipple with tiny and very deliberate nips of his teeth and sliding his hand deep between my thighs. His fingers are eager and urgent, and as he turns to my mouth I kiss him back, hungry for him, desperate to commit every atom of him to memory.
I’ve had a bad scare. I thought I’d lost him for ever. He pins my arms at my sides, so hard I wince. His eyes gleam again and now I feel a spike of fear.
‘And just so you know – in New York I took a raincheck on the bracelets, but tonight I’m calling it in.’
I lie very still. Deep down heat flares in my groin as arousal starts to thump in a low drumbeat of desire. I try not to let it show but I’m already tingling with excitement and now his hands are travelling slowly over my mound, his fingers moving gently in my private places and sending a rosy glow to my cheeks and my stiffening nipples.
‘Kneel up. And lose the robe.’
As I kneel before him I let the sable satin slide off my shoulders with a sensuous whisper. It pools on my calves and he flicks it away with an impatient twitch of his fingers.
‘Hands over your head. Thighs apart. Wider.’
Nervous now I shuffle wide open, giggling as he reaches between my legs and splays out his fingers, his touch so intimate I clench round his thumb and forefinger in an effort not to cry out. But his move is not a caress. It’s a deliberate act of fierce, shameful invasion. Both my passages are suddenly filled, his firm fingers staking a claim and his thumb landing firmly on my money-spot and moving gently, making me writhe. The gleam in his eyes warns me to stay absolutely still, enhancing the effect to fever pitch.
Yes, yes, just there … please, please …
I should be outraged. Instead I blush at his grin, shocked – not at his intrusion but at my sudden white-hot flash of excitement.
He lowers his eyelids. ‘You like?’
I swallow. ‘Do I have to say so out loud?’
He grins. ‘No need. Your tits are doing it for you.’ With his free hand he flicks my nipples, stiffening to numbness at my sudden impalement.
I shudder as arousal flares. His fingers keep moving gently in my forbidden places, sending tremors through me.
His eyes gleam. ‘Bend over. I want to try something. Ever been slap-fucked, Ella? I think now would be a good time. You?’
We could be discussing pie-fillings. I feel a surge of excitement and then a jolt as his hand lands on one side of my rump. Now he begins to pound, each thrust underlined by a crashing blow from his hand. The rhythm drums through me, straight to my groin. It shatters all my illusions about nice and nasty.
Soon he pulls away again and reaches round to feel my breasts, swinging free below me and thrust out as I lean forward and try to balance. He torments my nipples with eager, urgent fingers, his touch sure and precise, his torture exquisite. I’m forbidden to speak now but the urge to cry out, or giggle, or shout –
anything
– is overwhelming.
There’s something urgent about this, and now it’s borderline scary. He’s had a shock, and if he’s working through it like this there may be more to come. And scarier.
‘Are you enjoying this?’
‘I have to admit that?
Sir?
’ I try for playful but I’m nervous now. This could get very intense. My answers are his only guide to what I can take.
He hauls me up by the hips and turns me round to face him, landing on my mouth and teasing my lips with his, his tongue warm and gentle. ‘I’m going to tie you up. Lean back on the pillows.’
As I stretch out he hauls my arms up and swiftly loops my wrists to the bedhead with the sash from my discarded robe. Now he reclines at the other end of the bed, taking first one long, naked leg in his lap and then the other, running his hand all along my skin, fondling my feet and holding my gaze. As he starts to suck and nip at my toes I jerk in protest.
His eyes narrow as he waves a finger. ‘Uh-uh. No sound. Or we’ll have to resort to this.’ He slips off the bed in a lithe movement and leaves the room for a moment. When he returns he’s holding a long, slim piece of plastic. He takes hold of my foot again and this time I see a new gleam in his eyes.
‘This is a wand. And every time you cry out I’m going to tease you with it.’
What follows is torture, technically, and torment as well because my feet are ticklish – and so, I discover now, are the insides of my thighs, my inner places and my calves. As he plays with my toes I writhe and squirm but every time I whimper or moan he touches the thing to my nipples or my thighs or simply runs it over my skin.
It’s electric – and battery-operated. It shimmers blue flames along my skin. To a technophobe like me just the sight of it is absolutely terrifying. It feels tingly, the sound a light, buzzing crackle that reminds me of the dentist and scares me even more.
And now the torture gets even worse because what he’s doing and the slow, deliberate way he’s doing it are so disturbing that my arousal is burning me up. I sprawl on the covers, legs splayed wide, breasts pink and quivering at every touch of the awful thing. My nipples grow hard, jutting with arousal at every cruel touch and flicker.