A Dark Beginning: A China Dark Novel (3 page)
Read A Dark Beginning: A China Dark Novel Online
Authors: Paula Hawkes
09:15: HornEnvy : How close are we to making this happen
09:15: Tarb4u : very close now. I’ve got her in my sights
09:15: HornEnvy : Are you going to make a move?
09:16: Tarb4u : Oh yes, she’s going to get it real soon
09:17: HornEnvy : And you will tell me all about it, all the details
09:18: Tarb4u : I will, but you’ll be able to see it too
09:18: Tarb4u : I’ll make sure I capture every moment
09:18: HornEnvy : I can’t wait
09:19: Tarb4u : I’ll let you know when I’ve done her
Tonight had been rather special. Who would have thought that such a handsome man would want to pay her so much attention? He thought she was wonderful. He had told her so only a couple of hours ago. And then he had taken the most wonderful photographs of her for his private collection, after which they had made love. She was in love. It didn't need 135 characters to tell the world that. It would be a shock to her friends. It would be a shock to Mimi, her perfect little kitten.
She tapped the 'Tweet' button and looked up, not quite realising where she was at first. Her eyes squinted as she adjusted to the change in light from the bright white screen of her iPhone, to the shadow-laden tunnel of the alleyway. It took a few seconds for her pupils to adjust to the darkness, during which time her ears picked up a faint shuffling sound from behind her. She spun round, the alcohol in her blood threatening to destabilise her to the point of tumbling. Staggering, she recovered her balance and strained to stare dewy-eyed back the way she had come.
At the end of the passage a bright orange rectangle of light was almost blinding, and turned the scruffy walls and gateways, bins and rubbish bags into a mere hint of dark shapes and shadows. There were no more sounds, and Poppy breathed again, her exhalation loud in the near silence. As she breathed in she could smell damp rubbish and urine.
She muttered to herself and realised how drunk she really was as she heard her own words slurring. "Come on girl. You've had a good night, but it's time for bed now."
She knew Mimi would be waiting hungrily by the door for her return. She had only bought her a couple of weeks ago from an old lady in the downstairs flat, a present to herself to help her get over that scumbag Robert. How dare he leave her after five years! If anyone was going to leave anyone it should have been her leaving him. The wedding ring suddenly felt tight and hot on her finger and she thought it was time to sell that particular shackle. He'd been a pretty useless husband anyway. Mother would be disappointed of course. Robert had carried with him the promise of money and social prestige. But then mother didn't have to tolerate his constant cheating, or the belittling comments made to her in front of his posh friends.
She was angry when Robert had first told her that they were finished, but since meeting her new man she was beginning to accept that this was the best thing that could have happened to her. Her new lover may not be rich but he was so fit, and so very caring. He never slagged her off. Ok, it was true that she had to keep their relationship a secret. For now, he had said. But that was a small price to pay. And surely he wouldn't deny her a little Tweet, especially as she hadn't even mentioned his name. He'd never shown any anger towards her in the two weeks they’d been together, so she knew he'd be fine with it.
She jumped as she heard the abrupt sound of something loud skittering across the alleyway behind her.
"Who's there?" she shouted into the descending darkness. She was properly scared now. She wished she had chosen the long way home, around the housing estate, and not selected this shortcut just so that she could snuggle up sooner with Mimi on the sofa and tell her all about her wonderful evening.
The all-encompassing silence was good. She could tell herself that the sound had been a toppling bottle or a cat knocking an empty tin can over. In fact, a vocal response would have been just about the worst thing that could have happened. The only sound layered over the distant traffic was her breathing. Rapid now, almost panting, as if she had just been running. For a second time her heart started to slow down along with her breathing. There was nothing there. Lots of spooky shadows, but no movement that she could detect.
She decided that with no one about to see her embarrassment she would remove her far-too-high shoes, very sexy but almost impossible to walk in, and walk a little faster for the rest of the way. She might even jog for a bit. No harm in that. She didn't fancy going back the way she had come, despite the welcoming streetlight, which seemed rather a long way off now, apparently receding down the night lined tunnel of crouching, half-hidden boulder shapes.
Removing her shoes, wobbling then hopping, and eventually stuffing them into her bag, she turned to face the way she was originally heading and started to walk quicker than dignity would normally allow, but not as fast as self-preservation would prefer. When she heard another sound behind her, a faint tap that was just out of sync with the slap of her own bare footfalls on the cold concrete, she started to walk even faster. A sob escaped. She was being silly, she knew. It would be a cat, a fox, a carelessly placed rubbish sack that had finally toppled, but fear pressed hard into her stomach. A leaden block of ice filled her with an instinctive dread and right now she just needed to be drinking a glass of cool Sauvignon in front of some crap reality television program that Robert would never have let her watch.
She was almost at the point of running when she heard the heavy crash of glass smashing and the nightmare squeal of a cat. She stopped again. It was a cat after all. She bent over double, panting, one hand pressed to the painful burn of stitch in her side. Laughing out loud she gasped painful breaths as she tried to recover. That damned cat had scared the shit out of her.
She stood and looked back the way she had come. At first it didn't register and she just looked on in puzzlement as a dark shadow obscured the golden light from the distant road. An inconsequential grunt of shock left her mouth and then turned more to a groan as she felt the first stab of deathly pain in her stomach. She heard rather than felt the knife withdraw from her body, and then felt a flood of heat down the front of her jeans. Blood and urine soaked her crotch. It was too late to scream, even if she had been physically able to, when the second impact struck her between her ribs. It felt like she'd been hit by a truck. At first the pain wasn't sharp, it was more like a huge, blunt blow to her chest knocking all of the air out of her lungs. Shock protected her from the worst of the pain, but not from the darkness that was flowing into her vision, smearing shadows from the alley and leaching the light, washing into her sight like a contracting tunnel.
She didn't remember falling but her next vision was a sideways one. The cold concrete was pressed into her face. Her cheek really hurt, she presumed as the result of slamming into the floor. The rest of her body was numb. The sodium orange glow sparkled in the distance as if seen through rain spattered plastic. A shadow loomed over her, she felt a light touch on her forehead, gentle, almost soothing, and then the soft shadow flitted fast through the Christmas-light sparkles, all blurred and twinkling, receding back into the hellish distance, a spectre of pure imagination.
As the amber light dimmed in her young eyes a tear ran coldly down her bruised cheek and her last thought was to hope that someone found and fed Mimi before she got too hungry or lonely.
Over the course of the next few days China continued her daily routine of a pre-lunch coffee but she didn’t see the stranger again. Devak would always try and chat politely to her, but their conversations were limited to trite trivialities by her lack of attention. Eventually, even kind but persistent Devak decided to leave her in peace. Those hours were completely lost to her, as her mind wandered aimlessly through the confused pathways of desire and morality. Her book remained unread on the table beside her, and the Kindle would often go to sleep before she had devoured even a single page.
Every now and then she would check absent-mindedly in her bag. The crisp white card was always there, scribed with that simple, dangerous temptation. She would turn the card over in her fingers, sometimes pressing hard against the sharp edges to generate a stab of pain as the corners dug into her flesh, desperate to purge the threatening stranger who was so intrusive in her thoughts almost every hour of the waking day.
At night Philip would snuggle up to her, and she became vaguely aware of his increasing persistence in talking to her about his betrayal fantasy. Finally anger broke through the heavy curtain of her bewildered mind.
“Do you not love me any more, Philip?” she asked him pointedly.
He looked hurt and genuinely surprised. Sitting up in bed he placed a hand gently upon her shoulder. “Of course I do. I’ll always love you. Why would you ask that?”
“If you love me you wouldn’t be trying to get me to be unfaithful to you.”
“It’s because I love you that I want to see you happy.” His gaze shifted away from hers.
“I wouldn’t be happy with another man.” China’s thoughts stuttered at this even though her voice remained steady. Was she lying? She was beginning to doubt herself.
“You don’t know that. How can you be happy with just me for the rest of your life?”
“If that’s the case, then I could ask you the same thing.”
He looked worried now. “Ok, it’s not exactly that. I just love you so much, and you are the centre of my world, my fantasies. I don’t have a fantasy that doesn’t involve you. When I look at porn I always imagine you in the starring role. To see something that involved you, or even just to know that is was happening, would be so intense.”
“But you used to be so jealous, when we were first dating.”
“I know. And that was so destructive...”
“I kind of liked it.”
“Yes, but I hated being that possessive. It used to make me feel ill to see you talking to another man. Physically sick. Even if you just mentioned another man’s name I would feel myself getting angry and wanting to hurt him, to entirely delete him from your life so you’d never say his name or think of him again.”
“So what changed, Philip? What you are talking about know is the polar opposite of this.”
“I know. It was part of a kind of self-improvement programme that I decided upon,” he only half joked. “I realised that the only way I would get over that intense jealousy would be to turn the emotion into something positive. So I started to deliberately visualise you talking to other men, chatting with them. The more I did that, the more I became used to those thoughts, the dark feelings of envy turned into something hotter.”
She could actually appreciate what he was getting at. In the same way that people with phobias went through a desensitising process by deliberate exposure to the object of their fears, Philip had been doing something similar to help him deal with his particular problem emotion. He wasn’t looking at her as he said this, his focus was far away, as if he were experiencing those same emotions again.
“As I took the situation a little further each time in my imagination,” he continued, “I was actually becoming turned on by the thought of other men finding you attractive. I know you are mine, so it’s a huge compliment that other men might want you. That seems so right, and so hot. And then when I started to think how it would be if you responded, it started to blow my mind. The pain of jealousy was still there, but it became a masochistic pleasure.”
“That seems so weird. I would hate to see you with anyone else.”
“I know. But I’m not alone in having these fantasies. I’ve read up about it on the Internet. There are good scientific reasons for a man to be turned on by watching his wife or partner with another man. It increases a man’s libido, watching another person have sex with his wife.” He looked so serious that China wanted to laugh.
“Scientific? On the Internet? Are you serious?”
“Yes, honestly. So the fact that I get turned on by the thought of you having sex with another man isn’t so unusual.”
“It may not be unusual, but it’s not going to happen so I wish you would just stop going on about it.” Without thinking about it she added, “Maybe it’s really you who wants to be unfaithful.”
“Not at all.” Philip’s face turned red and his eyes flared as he now became angry. “I will never be unfaithful to you.”
“And neither will I to you, so let’s leave it. Ok?”
But whenever they touched now, China’s mind would imagine what it would be like if Mark was there, touching her, instead of her husband. It was too easy to tell herself that Philip had given her permission to entertain these thoughts of betrayal, allow them the headspace that those thoughts craved. The sane part of her knew that this was just an excuse for her to test the elasticity of her moral barriers, and she fought back. The thoughts were banished within seconds of arrival, but the mental Tourette’s that would inject these visions into every intimate moment was persistent.
