Past Mortem (16 page)

‘That shirt needs a wash anyway,’ she said as she let loose, squirting pee at his chest and then his face. This was another first for Newson. He was surprised at how hot it was and at how excited he felt. He’d never seen a girl pee close up, in fact he couldn’t remember seeing a girl pee at all.

‘Now me,’ Helen said, slipping down into the bath as Newson took off his sodden shirt.

‘Bit of a problem,’ Newson said, indicating his achingly erect penis.

‘I said piss on me! For Christ’s sake! So just
do it
, will you?’ Helen grabbed at the shaft of Newson’s dick and bent it down towards her face.

Newson yelped in pain but none the less did his best to do as he was told, leaning forward, supporting himself with his hands against the wall. He slowly began to pee over Helen.

‘Harder,’ Helen spluttered.

‘I can’t do it any harder,’ he said. ‘I’m in bloody agony as it is.’

‘Good.’ She reached out and bent Newson’s erect penis further towards her.

Newson watched as she played the hot stream over her face and mouth and into her spiky punky hair.

When he’d finished Helen stood up and kissed him. This was not something that Newson wanted to happen. He was not and never had been interested in water sports. At a pinch, being very drunk, he might have been just about happy to taste a smidgeon of Helen’s urine, but his own was something in which he had no interest whatsoever, and Helen’s mouth was dripping with it. If she noticed his closed mouth as she worked her face against his she did not seem to mind.

‘OK. I’m ready again,’ she said.

Newson wondered what would be required of him now, as once again she took his hand, this time leading him into the bedroom. He’d been rather hoping that a shower might be part of what she had in mind, but he was disappointed.

‘Fuck me,’ she said, falling on to the bed, her body and hair glistening wet, while Newson tried with all his might not to worry about the sheets.

‘Fuck me.’

‘Fine. All right. I can do that.’

‘And do it without a condom this time.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s just a rule I have.’

Helen shrugged. ‘OK. I bought some with ribs on.’

‘Lovely.’

Despite her own preferences, Helen had come prepared. Lying on her back on Newson’s bed, she raised one knee in order to bring half of her sodden trousers within reach. She probed in the pocket and produced a packet of three exotic-looking condoms and tossed them at Newson.

For the briefest moment Newson found himself thinking of the exotic condoms that he and Natasha had discovered in Farrah Porter’s bedside cabinet. Then he thought of Natasha, and a dizzying wave of drunkenness swept over him.

‘Bag it up if you must,’ Helen snapped, ‘but I really think you’re a sissy.’

Fumbling with the packet, Newson did as he was told and then fell upon his old schoolfriend, determined to put all squeamishness regarding the fact that they were both covered in piss and olive oil from his mind. His sexual preferences were pretty conventional and he had never before had what might be described as a truly dirty shag. He reckoned that he was having one now, though, and he decided that he owed it to himself to get over his reservations and quite literally go with the flow.

Now, however, he encountered a problem. Perhaps due to her taste for fisting, Helen was very loose. She was also very oily and Newson simply could not gain enough purchase to maintain the required state of arousal. Even as he entered her he was horrified to feel the imminent -danger of everything collapsing beneath him. He couldn’t believe it. He’d been as solid as a rock moments before, running at fever pitch, desperate to ejaculate, and now this.

Helen realized the situation at almost the same moment. Perhaps she was used to it. Anyway, she had a solution. ‘Stick it in my arse,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

‘You heard what I said. Stick it in my arse. It’s tighter and I like it either way.’ She rolled over on to her knees and, dropping her chin to the sheets, arched her back, offering her prone backside to him, cheeks spread wide.

Newson hesitated and Helen looked back at him over her shoulder. ‘Come on!’ she snapped, ‘stick it in.’

She reached back, grabbing at him, and Newson allowed himself to be guided. He pushed for a moment as her muscle resisted and then, all of a sudden, he popped through and in so doing chalked up yet another sexual first. Anal sex was something else that until now Newson had managed to get through life without. In the space of one crazy half-hour debauch Helen Smart had increased his sexual experience more than he had been able to do himself in the entire twenty-two years that had passed since his puberty.

‘Go easy,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while, it hurts.’

‘I’ll stop, shall I? Should I stop?’ said Newson, ever the gentleman.

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid. Just let me loosen up for a second, then go hard.’

Once more Newson did as he was told, and shortly thereafter, with a head spinning out of control on beer, vodka and confusingly hardcore sex, he finally climaxed, collapsing forward on to Helen’s back.

‘You finished?’ Helen asked, somewhat tetchily.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Suck the cum out of my arse and then kiss me with it.’

‘No.’

‘Just do what I say.’

‘No.’

‘Do it!’

‘I’m sorry, Helen, but I said no.’

‘It’s called felching.’

‘I don’t care what it’s called. I’m not doing it. As it happens, I couldn’t anyway, not that I would, but I couldn’t because I’m wearing a condom.’

‘No, you’re not. I took it off when I was guiding you into my arse.’

‘What!’

‘I told you, I don’t like them. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly clean.’

It took a moment or two for this to sink in. What Helen had done was so wrong on so many levels that Newson hardly knew where to start.

‘Perfectly clean!’ he spluttered. ‘You’ve just had me fist you, piss in your mouth and bugger you without a condom. How can you say you’re perfectly clean?’

‘I mean I’m clean physically, healthwise.’

‘You can’t possibly know that for sure — ’

‘I don’t do this with just anybody, you know.’

‘What? Deliberately put them at risk of contracting STDs?’

‘All the things we did. I’m usually celibate.’

‘
Usually?
You can’t be
usually
celibate…You either
are
celibate or you’re not! Anyway, it’s completely irrelevant. You’ve…you’ve…
Fucking hell
, Helen!’

Suddenly Newson felt completely sober and desperately stupid. What had he done? It was horrible, disgusting. There was piss and semen all over his sheets. He stank, she stank. The spuds would be boiled to a pulp. He felt like he was going to be sick. ‘That was an incredibly stupid and irresponsible thing to do. You can’t just secretly remove a person’s condom!’

Helen began to cry. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to feel closer to you.’

‘But Helen, you’re a grown-up woman. You’ve got a kid, you know the rules. You just can’t go around doing that sort of thing. You’ve abused me. Betrayed a trust.’

Helen drew the sheet up to her chin. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry,’ she said, before adding in a small, quiet voice, ‘But then you’d know all about abuse and betrayal of trust, wouldn’t you, Edward?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You dumped me, didn’t you?’

‘Oh, please!’

‘You made me look like a complete arse in front of the whole school.’

‘Helen. That’s just insane! We were two fourteen-year-olds who’d had one snog and fumble. And also could I remind you that it was
twenty
years ago?’

‘You never tried to find me, did you? When I didn’t come back after New Year.’

‘I phoned you. You told me your parents were moving.’

‘They weren’t. I went into hospital.’

‘Because I’d got off with Christine Copperfield?’

‘Because that was when I first started to hurt myself.’

‘Which is not my fault.’

‘I felt worthless.’

‘Which again is not my fault.’

‘It all started around about then.’

‘Surely you’re not suggesting, Helen, that because I left you standing by the fruit punch while I went and danced with Christine I’m responsible for what appears to have been a lifelong instability? We were just schoolmates, for Christ’s sake!’

‘I thought you loved me. I thought it was us against the world.’

‘And you’re saying that until the night of the Christmas disco you’d been completely fine, a well-adjusted girl?’

‘No, I’d always hated myself.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which is why when I thought you liked me I felt happy, and when I found out you didn’t it was ten times worse.’

‘Oh,
come on
, Helen. This isn’t fair. I never gave you any reason to think we were together.’

‘You said you loved me when you held me that night. You said mine were the nicest tits you’d ever seen.’

‘They were just about the
only
tits I’d ever seen.’

‘I hated them! The other girls called me Jelly Tots. Christine fucking Copperfield came up with that, Edward. Your girlfriend! But
you
said you liked them!’

‘And I did! I do! They’re very nice. But Helen, we were fourteen. We were in the same year at school. We were friends, that was all.’

‘You never called me once after school broke up.’

‘It was Christmas. Who calls their mates in the Christmas holidays? I called you when you didn’t show up at school in the New Year.’

‘After a week.’

‘Look, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I think we need to clean ourselves up, have a shower and then maybe we can sit down and talk properly.’

‘I like feeling dirty.’

‘Well, I don’t and you’re in my bed.’

‘And you were in
my
arse!’

‘What the fuck has that got to do with anything!’

‘You’ve had what you wanted, Edward, and you can’t just give me orders now that you’ve finished.’

Newson decided he’d better stop talking for a moment. He knew that he was in dangerous waters. He and this woman from his past had just done things that could not be ignored and yet clearly she had come to him with a very specific agenda.

Had he been
stalked?

‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he said.

The bath was still puddled with urine, and Newson felt dizzy with self-loathing, hating himself for what he’d done with this strange woman. And she
was
a strange woman. He now recognized that he hadn’t known Helen Smart the
first
time around. And now, unbeknownst to him, she had fixated on him as the solution to her secret pain and self-doubt. He got into the shower cubicle and was finally and copiously sick. He washed himself with pointless vigour, paying particular attention to his penis, which he soaped and rinsed six or seven times. If Helen Smart was in the habit of having unprotected anal sex, then there was every chance that she was not as clean as she thought she was. He studied his dick. He reflected that he had not been inside Helen for long, and of course the risk was far greater for her in that position than for him. Nonetheless Newson knew that he would see his doctor in the morning and once again in three months, and only when that was clear would he entirely relax.

When he could wash himself no longer, he wrapped a towel around his waist and stood for a moment, gathering his thoughts in preparation for facing Helen once more and negotiating her out of his house and out of his life.

It was then that the bells and sirens started to ring. For a moment in his semi-drunken, traumatized state Newson imagined that this was one more element in Helen’s perverse sexual repertoire. Perhaps she liked to end a sticky conquest with an ear-splitting cacophony of noise. Then he smelt burning and remembered the potatoes. He rushed downstairs. The kitchen was filling with smoke, which, of course, had set off his smoke alarms. Naked and advancing across the kitchen to turn off the gas, Newson skidded on the puddle of olive oil. Arms flailing, his legs disappeared from under him and he hit the kitchen floor with a thud. His head and lower back took most of the impact and on later reflection he realized that he must have blacked out momentarily. Certainly when the telephone began to ring he had trouble distinguishing it from the agonizing noise of the smoke and fire alarms.

Struggling to get himself upright, he racked his brain to orientate himself sufficiently to locate the telephone. He had to answer it, he knew that. He
must
answer it, because he knew that it would be his alarm monitoring service, and if he didn’t they would send the fire brigade, and above all else Newson did not want them to send the fire brigade. There was very little clear in Newson’s mind at that moment but of one thing he was certain: he did not want half a dozen large men trying to force their way into his house with axes.