“So.” Burns turned to face her, the leather squeaking beneath him. “This is where you live.”
The atmosphere between them was thrilling and unkind.
“Yes,” she said stiffly, wondering why she didn’t just throw open the door and get out. “Where do you live, with your wife?”
He tried to smile. “You’re very interested in my wife.”
“I’m interested in the fact that you wear a wedding ring at work and not when you’re out at the pub.”
He sighed patiently and cupped the gearstick with his hand. They both looked at it: if he flexed his fingers the tips would be inches from her thigh. “You don’t know what the police are like. It’s important to fit in. You can’t tell everyone in the canteen that your wife’s mentally ill and you’re frightened to go home.”
He glanced up at her to see if the lie had taken but she was skeptical. “Your wife’s mentally ill?”
“What do you think would make a woman do this?” He lifted the waistband on his sweater and undid two buttons on his shirt, pulling it open and baring his stomach. The skin was as smooth and shiny as toffee. She could see the outline of his muscles. A suggestive seam of black hair crept down under his waistband.
“Look.” He touched a patch of perfect skin.
“Where?” she said, glad of the excuse to keep looking.
“There.” He touched himself again.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Here.” Reaching over to take her hand, he pressed her fingertips to the warm skin. Her hand slid across his stomach, taking in a small scar.
“There?”
“Yeah. A bottle opener. She came at me with a bottle opener.”
He thought she was a mug and was using the cheapest lines on her, insulting his absent wife to trick the knickers off her. Yet she still felt her fingers glide across his silken skin and her mouth began to water. His hand covered hers, pressing the fingers deep into the skin.
“I think you’re a liar,” she whispered.
His free hand slipped along her thigh. She didn’t care if he felt the fat there. He didn’t deserve a thin girlfriend.
“You’ve got me all wrong,” he said breathlessly. “I’m a good guy.”
The dark night pressed around the car, blacking out the windows, seeping in through the cracks and filling the tiny cabin with the moist, musky scent of nighttime. Unbidden, Paddy’s hand slipped up to his chest and her fingers felt an erect nipple, a tuft of hair, a heartbeat so forceful she could almost hear the echo of it in the car.
He reached inside her coat, cupping her soft round stomach, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast. Her hand slid back down to his stomach, feathering the powder-soft skin, making his eyes roll back in his head. He was melting into his seat when she pulled her hand away.
“Not outside my parents’ house.”
Burns sat upright. “Where is there around here?”
Paddy sat back. “Out onto the main road and go right,” she said.
They took the old road to the steelworks, a defunct metal purifying facility that once occupied two square miles of land. It had been closed down, leaving a devastated landscape where the sulfurous scent of the devil still clung to the ground.
Burns found a potholed turning off the main road and cut his lights as they drove down it.
Moonlight illuminated a churned field of discarded rope and jagged shards of metal. When they were far enough not to be seen from the road he stopped the car, turned the engine off, and looked at her.
Paddy had cooled a little, caught her breath, and she wasn’t sure now but Burns’s fingers brushed her ear.
“Your neck,” he whispered, pulling her scarf. It fell away, unwinding like a snake uncoiling from a branch.
There were reasons why this was a bad idea but Paddy struggled to recall what they were. He pulled a small square packet from his hip pocket, a condom, and set it on the dashboard in a smug certainty that made her despise him. Oblivious, he reached across with his other hand and took her by the waist, pulling her to his lap, sliding her skirt up her legs. His hot hands were on her thigh, on her arse, on her bare breasts, his lips wet and ardent.
The last conscious thought in Paddy’s mind was a note of caution so distant that it seemed to relate to events far away.
She leaned back and handed him the condom, leaving him to pull it on as she wrestled her tights and knickers down over one ankle, graceless and desperate, leaving them to dangle off her left foot. She straddled him, kissed him, pushing his shirt up and pressing bare skin to bare skin.
When Burns pushed himself into her he still had the strip of the condom packet in his mouth. Paddy felt her eager cunt flowering out to greet him, a giant fleshy rose.
She couldn’t focus or see anything but the hairs on his neck, the maze of wrinkles on the leather headrest behind him. She couldn’t control her breathing. She held his shoulder tightly, perhaps hurting him, she didn’t know or care, pulling herself back and forth, stroking her clit with her free hand.
She was nothing but an overwhelming urge and couldn’t stop now if she needed to. Suddenly her cunt spasmed, her legs shutting as she jackknifed into his chest. Every pore on her skin shuddered and a cold wash swept over her.
She could feel something warm dribbling down her bare thighs. The skin between her legs was wet, not slimy, and she was sure she had urinated into his lap. Ashamed, she stayed where she was, stiff, feeling ridiculous and naked and vulnerable. His large hand was suddenly obscene on her damp buttock. She shifted her weight, extricating her trembling legs, but Burns stopped her, making her wait where she was while he kissed her neck with an open mouth and breathed her name.
She didn’t look at him as she climbed back into the passenger seat. She stared out of the window, pretending to be engrossed in the flat, ruined land, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. Her knickers and tights were still around her ankle but she pulled her skirt down primly, wondering how she could get them up and cover herself with any dignity.
Next to her Burns pulled the condom off and tied a knot in it, smiling to himself in a way that made her feel excluded and stupid and angry. The windows were opaque with condensation. Burns ran a finger down the windscreen and smirked again. Turning on the engine, he sat back, waiting for the windows to clear, and tapped his knee patiently. He reached forward to the radio but Paddy panicked, thinking he was going to touch her again.
“We should go,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m tired.”
It was half two and she worked the night shift five days a week. She would be awake all night and they both knew it. Burns gave half a smile and stumbled across a station playing Lionel Richie’s “Running with the Night.” A childlike pleasure came over his face until he heard her snigger; his fingers flicked onward to another station and Echo and the Bunnymen.
“Better?”
“I don’t like Lionel Richie but put it back if you want to hear it.”
“No, I don’t like him either.” He cringed at his obvious lie. “Okay, I do like him. Is he not cool?”
She smiled. “Lionel Richie?”
“Yeah? He’s not, is he?” He bit his lip.
“Burns, what age are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“You’re only two years older than me. How come you dress like Val Donigan?”
He sat back and smiled at her, pulling his V-neck straight. It wasn’t his usual toothy matinee idol smile but a coy asymmetric face crumple. “I’m a polis. This gear is cool in the polis. You like this crowd?” He pointed to the radio.
“I like Echo and the Bunnymen, yeah.” She didn’t really but she wanted to.
“See, I just think that guy can’t sing.”
They each nodded hesitantly, looking unguardedly at each other. She imagined him dressed well for a moment, without the severe haircut and the terrible outfit. He had dark eyes and a big, character nose. He scratched his neck. “I want to see you again.”