Singled Out (2 page)

The man exhaled a huge sigh and lay limp as a glove puppet. Laura stayed astride him, feeling the little twitchings as his penis shrank away inside her. ‘Hope it was good for you too.' His mumbled words sounded unnatural, a quotation from some worthy tome on interpersonal relationships.

‘It was fine for me,' Laura murmured. Not of course that she had come. Or even enjoyed it. But then that hadn't been the aim of the exercise.

Forty minutes later they fucked again. To have described it as ‘making love' would have been inappropriate. The man seemed to feel no great need to repeat his performance, but after all her planning, Laura was determined. This time she manoeuvred him on top of her. He tried to control himself and extend the action, but she was in charge. A few well-organized twitches of her vaginal muscles and once again he had shot his load inside her.

‘You made me come too quickly,' he grumbled as he withdrew.

Laura said nothing, but reached for the whisky bottle and recharged his glass. The man drank it down and lay still beside her in feigned sleep. After a few minutes a series of little shudders ran through his body as real sleep took over.

Laura looked at her watch. Half past eleven. She decided to wait and see. If nothing else was forthcoming, she'd get rid of him. Cautiously she moved out of the bed. Fluid trickled stickily down the inside of her legs, but she made no attempt to clean herself up. She picked up her handbag from by the sofa and checked inside. The metal curve of her automatic pistol's butt reassured her. She hoped she wouldn't need the gun, but was comforted to know it was there. Placing the handbag on the floor nearby, she lay back down on the bed.

It was about an hour before the man shuddered awake again. For a moment he gazed around blearily, uncertain where he was. With recollection seemed to come revulsion. He swung his legs round to sit on the side of the bed, his back to Laura.

‘Have you got a cigarette?' he growled.

‘No. I don't smoke.'

‘Might've bloody known it. Pass the whisky.'

As she handed the bottle across, Laura let her hand linger on the man's shoulder. He made no attempt to remove it, so, while he poured another drink, she let her hand glide down his back, round the curve of the hips towards his penis.

‘What are you – some kind of nymphomaniac?' he snapped, breaking free.

‘No. I just thought we might do it again.'

‘Well, I don't want to.' He sounded as petulant as a schoolboy.

‘All right,' said Laura coolly. ‘You'd better go.'

‘What?'

‘I said you'd better go.'

‘Listen!' The man turned sharply towards her. His face, tightened up into an expression of fury, was no longer beautiful. ‘I decide when I want to go – right! You're just a tart – a bloody whore – and just because I've fucked you, it doesn't give you any rights over me!'

Laura's voice stayed even and unemotional. ‘I'm not claiming any rights over you. I'm just saying it's time for you to get dressed and go.'

‘Don't you order me around!'

His right hand leapt out as if to slap, but Laura was quick enough to move her face away. In spite of his beautiful body, the man looked ridiculous in his nakedness, trying to assert control. Laura hadn't intended to smile, but she must have done.

With a cry of ‘You cow! Don't you dare laugh at me!', he suddenly had his hands round her neck. The pressure was light, but his muscles were rigid, ready to tighten, and the glint in his eye was ugly. Laura offered no resistance, but slipped back on to the bed, her right arm trailing over the side.

‘All the bloody same, you women!' the man hissed. ‘Either you won't let us have sex when we want it, or else you bloody force yourselves on us. Cunts, that's all you are – just bloody cunts!'

She had no alternative. When Laura's right arm moved up from beside the bed, the gun was held firmly in her hand. The man's blue eyes blinked in amazement as the end of the barrel was pressed against the middle of his forehead.

‘I said,' Laura murmured quietly, ‘that it was time for you to get dressed and go.'

He didn't speak as he released his hold and moved cautiously away from the bed. He scrabbled on the floor for his clothes, and put them on with clumsy speed. All the time he held Laura's gaze, and all the time she kept the gun trained on him. He didn't bother to put his tie on. At the door he paused to throw back one final insult, but thought better of it, and shuffled off into the corridor.

Laura crossed swiftly to the door and double-locked it. She never met the man again.

She found herself trembling after he had gone. Not just with relief, but also with shock at how she had behaved. It was exactly what she had intended to do, but that she had been able to do it with such detachment left her dazed and unnerved.

She replaced the covers on the bed and slid herself under them. Suddenly, as the tension drained from her, she felt exhausted. With surprising ease, she slipped into sleep.

The taxi dropped Laura Fisher outside her flat in Bays-water. She gave the driver a fifty-pence coin and told him to keep the change. As she extracted keys from the pocket of her coat, she checked her watch. Just time to change and grab some coffee. She hadn't had anything at the hotel. Up and showered early, checked out by seven, paying in cash and leaving no sign that she'd ever been there, except for the name in the register. ‘Carole Saunders.'

She was opening the front door when a voice close up behind her said, ‘Good morning, Laura.'

She pulled the door closed and took her key out of the lock before turning to face her husband. ‘Good morning, Michael. Creeping up on me again, are you?'

He was still good-looking, though his jaw had lost the sharp outline it had had when they married in 1967. The single button of his wide-lapelled blazer strained a little over his stomach, and the restless blue eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets. His hair was thinning at the front. He no longer looked the Head Boy he had once been, but his voice still retained its public school arrogance.

‘Not creeping up. Just driving past and saw you.' He gestured to the gleaming white Citroen DS parked opposite.

‘Oh yes?' said Laura, disbelieving.

‘Aren't you going to invite me in?'

‘No,' she replied. ‘I'm never going to risk being alone in a room with you again, Michael.'

They had coffee in the anonymous lounge of a nearby hotel. The other customers were a group of white-robed Arabs and a party of German students.

‘This is bloody stupid, Laura,' Michael protested. ‘I'm not a monster. I'm not going to hurt you.'

‘It's my flat and I'll decide who I invite into it, thank you.'

He let out an exasperated sigh. ‘How long are you intending to keep this up?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Look, I'm very impressed. You've proved you're capable of setting up on your own. You've rented a flat, you're paying for it out of your own money, you're independent – full marks. But the fact remains that there's a much nicer house in Richmond where you should be living.'

‘I don't see that there's any “should” about it.'

‘Laura, I think I've been very long-suffering over this. I've let you go your own way, do your own thing … I even let you go off and work in New Zealand for six months … but now any point that needed proving has been proved. You should come back. I'm still your husband, and husbands do have certain rights.'

Laura gazed at him in disbelief. ‘Michael, don't you listen? Haven't you heard any of the things I've been saying over the last few years? Our marriage is over. We are going to get divorced.'

He shook his head with infuriating calm. ‘There's no reason for us to get divorced. I haven't got anyone else. You haven't got anyone else.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I know. I keep an eye on what you're up to, Laura.'

She looked up sharply, but with a smug smile he avoided eye contact. His words had stimulated a suspicion which had been growing for some time, the suspicion that Michael was spying on her. That morning wasn't the first time he had appeared as if by accident. There had been occasions when Laura felt sure she'd glimpsed him on the street when she was out shopping, or seen a white DS flash by as she arrived at or left her office. She didn't think that she was getting paranoid.

‘Michael, you must cooperate on this divorce. Admit we made a mistake. We married too young, before we'd found our own personalities.'

‘I'd found mine. And I was established in my work. When we got married I was already a partner in the agency, for God's sake.'

‘Yes, but I wasn't established in my work. Or in my personality. I am now, and I've changed. I'm different from the person you married, Michael.'

‘That's certainly true. And don't imagine for a moment that I think it's an improvement.'

Laura looked down at her watch. ‘I must get to work.'

He appeared not to have heard her. ‘We should have started a family straight away …' he mused disconsolately. ‘Then none of this nonsense would have happened.'

‘By “nonsense” you mean my career, do you?'

‘Not just your career. I mean this stupid situation we've got ourselves into – living apart, sniping away at each other all the time. We're both thirty, for God's sake.'

‘Not quite in my case.'

‘Near enough. What we should be doing at this time of our lives is bringing up a family.'

‘What
I
should be doing I think you mean.'

‘Hm?'

‘If we had children, would it affect your life much?'

‘Well, obviously.'

‘Would you stop working, stop selling houses, stop wheeling and dealing on the property market …?'

‘No, of course I wouldn't, Laura.'

‘But you'd expect me to.'

‘I'd have to keep working to pay the bills, simply to –'

‘I make more than you do, Michael.'

As ever, he was stung by this fact. He looked away shiftily, then changed tack, reaching forward to take her hand across the coffee table. ‘The main thing – the thing that seems to get lost in all this other stuff – is that I love you, Laura.'

She gave him a wry look. ‘I wonder.'

‘I do.'

‘I wonder if you actually know what love means. Perhaps you do love me, according to your definition of love.'

‘And I want you.' His voice became thick and urgent. ‘I want to make love to you.'

‘But I don't want to make love to you, Michael.'

‘Why not?'

‘We've been through all this. Because love didn't seem to have anything to do with what we used to do in bed. It was just you taking me, an exercise in power. It was you trying to colonize my body.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.' His voice was heavily dismissive. ‘Is that a quotation from Germaine Greer or another of those –?'

‘No, it's what I think, Michael. You just wanted to control me – and planting a baby inside me would have been the ultimate form of control.'

‘No, it's –'

‘I'll have a child when
I
want to have a child.'

‘Listen!' His hand closed fiercely over hers, crushing the bones together. ‘I can only take so much of this!'

‘Don't start that again, Michael.'

For a moment he could not contain the fury inside him, but then his grip relaxed. Laura withdrew her hand and rubbed it to restore the circulation.

‘Now do you understand why I don't want to be alone in a room with you?'

He shook his head in exasperation. ‘God, what can a man do with a bloody woman?'

‘He can refrain from hitting her, for a start.'

‘Laura, that only happened once or twice.' Catching sight of her expression, he looked away. ‘And it wasn't as if I lacked provocation. You were my wife, for God's sake!'

‘Yes, I
was
.'

‘But, Laura –'

‘Don't make a fuss about the divorce, Michael. Let it go through. Otherwise the domestic violence may have to be brought up in court.'

‘It was hardly domestic violence.'

‘Wasn't it?'

Once again he could not meet her eye. A little smile tugged at his sulky lips. ‘Anyway, if it did come up in court, I'd love to know how you'd prove it. No witnesses, were there?'

‘No.'

‘So it'd just be your word against mine, wouldn't it, Laura?'

‘Yes.'

‘And most judges are men, aren't they?' said Michael smugly.

Her husband drove off in a disgruntled squeal of tyres, and Laura let herself into the house. It was a tall white building fronted by an impressive portico and black railings. Her flat was on the second floor with a view over the trees of the central square. Rented. Soon she wanted to buy her own place, but needed a few more years of high earnings. Building societies were still wary of giving mortgages to single women.

She switched on the transistor radio, which was tuned to the new commercial station, Capital, and looked round the living room. Her own space was very precious. It gave Laura enormous and continuing satisfaction to know that every item in the room was hers alone. She had chosen them, she had paid for them, they expressed her identity.

She put on the kettle in the kitchenette and, while it was boiling, changed her clothes. Basic, functional underwear, tights. Ribbed T-shirt with a row of buttons at the neck, Indian cotton dungarees. Green shoes with platform soles and appliquéd leather flowers. It was hot in the office. Better to dress as for the summer and ward off the October chill with her coat when she went outside.

She put all her dirty clothes in the washing machine. They didn't make a full load, but Laura needed to start the wash straight away. The clothes didn't exactly feel soiled, but the events of the night before required a symbolic cleansing. The unimportant details of what had happened needed to be purged away.