“Owain,” I could hear her say breathlessly as I dragged the shoulder straps right down her arms, feeling them tighten. “Owain, please!”
I freed one hand to get my trousers open, tugging them down to my knees. Then up underneath her skirt to grasp her tights, pulling at them while she pleaded and twisted, allowing me to free them, to peel them away. I crushed my mouth on hers again, shifting my weight forward, pressing my erection between her legs, already full to bursting.
“Take it easy,” I heard Tanya say. “Slow down!”
She wasn’t ready. I had a partial recovery of my senses. I used my tongue to lubricate my fingers, began stroking her. She writhed beneath me, playing the game of subdue and conquer to the hilt. I pushed my face into the crook of her neck, feeding on it, fumbling between her legs. I found a slickness there, exploited it instantly, surging in.
Marisa beneath me, slim and olive-skinned, head twisted back, the skirt of her dress thrust up to her wast, its straps pinioning her at the elbows. Tanya more ample, her gown a pool of cream at her midriff. I had my hands on her shoulders, pressing down as I thrusted, looming over her. She was squashed into a corner, uncomfortably twisted. A voice was repeating my name in feverish entreaty, but I couldn’t stop myself. Within a matter of seconds I was lost, jetting a few instants of my entire consciousness into them.
A long silence. No movement apart from the pulse of my heart and the diminuendo of my breathing. Finally I raised my head.
Marisa continued to lie absolutely still. She was gazing at the ceiling.
Owain withdrew, getting up and stumbling away from her. He went into the bathroom and began swabbing himself down with toilet paper.
Revenge. It had been revenge. All this time he’d trusted her, assumed that she was genuinely interested in him, had feelings for him. Now he was certain she was working for her husband. A spy planted to extract information from him about what his uncle was doing.
He splashed water on his face and dried it. Took the remainder of the toilet roll into the living room.
Marisa was sitting up, her knees clamped together. Owain offered her the toilet roll. She just looked at him.
Her hair was tousled, her face flushed. I couldn’t tell whether the muted look in her eyes was a result of abuse or consummated desire. I didn’t know whether she had been pleading with him to continue or to stop.
Owain himself scarcely cared. He tossed the toilet roll onto the sofa beside her.
I slumped back, looking at Tanya with bewilderment. I’d been gripping her shoulders so hard I’d left imprints on them.
She untangled her legs from mine and eased herself up to a more comfortable position. She looked disturbed but not exactly outraged. Unsure as I was about Marisa’s compliance, I knew that Tanya had been a willing partner, at least at first.
“I can’t believe I did this,” I told her.
“You were pretty rough.”
Not exactly the response I had expected. As if she was more concerned with style rather than content. Which was a relief in one sense but shameful in another. That she’d wanted me and that it was Geoff I had betrayed. Geoff, who’d offered nothing but utter generosity of spirit.
And not only Geoff. What about my own family? Until I knew what had happened to them I couldn’t take anything for granted. There was also the sudden emergence of Owain’s sexuality. He’d been impotent, or at least functionally celibate, for years. Had I had any influence over that?
“This is such a mess,” I said, as angry as I was ashamed. “It’s such a bloody mess.”
Tanya was calm. She looked less distressed than exasperated.
“O,” she said finally. “What is it? What’s really wrong?”
I knew she wasn’t asking about Lyneth and the girls: that was given. I had a feeling that she already suspected more than I imagined about the power and pull of my secret life. How much had I already given away? Had I called out Marisa’s name again? Or been supplanted by Owain in more blatant ways than I’d assumed? She needed some truth from me, if only in recompense for what had just happened.
The truth about where I went when I wasn’t there.
Owain heard water spurting erratically from the shower. The supply was never reliable after dark, little more than tepid bursts. But Marisa persisted: he could hear her lathering herself, pausing each time the flow ceased before resuming. She was being thorough, taking her time, enduring whatever discomfort was necessary.
She’d taken her clothes in with her. Hadn’t asked for a towel. He went to the cupboard in the hallway, found a white one he’d never used. He laid it outside the door and called through to say that he had done so.
No reply. He hadn’t expected one. In the back of his head there was a high-pitched whine, only just within the limits of audibility. For once he didn’t quite know what to do next. He wanted to leave, to walk away for an hour, so that by the time he came back she would be gone. But he refused to be a coward.
He felt no sense that he had done anything wrong: merely something irrevocable. He’d wanted to challenge her that she’d been making sexual overtures to him ever since they had started seeing one another; but she’d gone into the bathroom and locked the door before he could say anything.
He sat in the armchair and waited. At length he heard the water stop. The door opened and closed again. She was still inside. She’d taken the towel.
The mosquito whine would not go away. As a purely academic exercise he began to contemplate what the outcome might be if he simply killed her. He would have to dispose of her body, and also her car. He could take both and simply dump them somewhere, make it look like a random assault. But unlikely to be convincing, especially if Legister had dispatched her to him. No, it was neither necessary nor desirable. If she cried rape, he’d take whatever measures he could to protect himself, though somehow he doubted that she would actually tell Legister what had happened. It would be like a confession of professional failure, an admission that her cover had been blown in the most naked fashion.
He was smiling to himself. The door opened again, and he heard her come out. He didn’t get up from the armchair.
She came into the doorway, her hair still damp. Bare-legged, looking more waif-like than ever, a little lost girl done up as a woman. It was such an artful pose that a renewed slus to violence took root in him. I did my utmost to dampen it, but his emotions were at boiling point.
There was an English sergeant he’d served with at the Konigsberg garrison who liked urchin refugees, who boasted that he held them tight as he took them from behind, one hand wrenching their chins up so he could slit their throats in the instant of his climax. A little death and a big death, he liked to joke. He kept his knife honed and oiled because you never knew when the opportunity would arise. Smiled like an alligator. Said that it was easy, made you feel like a little god. All-powerful. Answerable to no one in the blind, heedless universe.
“I must go,” Marisa said, looking straight at him.
Owain’s hand was already resting on his knife.
“Owen!”
I was slumped on the carpet. Tanya helped me back up on to the sofa. I’d fallen off, fainted.
“I’m all right,” I assured her, though I was in fact a little groggy.
She went into the kitchen and came back with a damp towel which she insisted I press against my forehead.
“Was it—him?”
She meant Owain. I’d tried to stifle him, to black him out: which had presumably made me pass out here.
“Not exactly,” I told her. “I wanted to stop him.”
She didn’t pursue this. I could tell she was still trying to decide whether I was totally mad or not.