A Wayward Game Read online

  “Hold out your hand,” I say.

  He extends his right hand, palm up, and I squirt some shower gel into it.

  “Now,” I say, “rub it between my legs.”

  His hand slips down my wet body, and I feel his fingers stroking the sensitive skin between my thighs. His hand moves up and cups my groin, and his thumb runs over the thin line of hair there. I lean closer to him, pressing my breasts against his chest, seeking his mouth with mine. We kiss, and I slip my tongue between his lips just as his finger slides inside me and begins to stroke my clitoris. I feel a sharp tingle of pleasure, and make a small sound of desire. My clitoris hardens beneath his touch, every nerve standing to attention, while pleasure-bearing chemicals flood my brain and drown out all anxiety and fear. I kiss him harder, and he strokes me more firmly, until I think I might die of desire.

  “Oh God,” I whisper. “You don’t know what you do to me. You don’t know how you make me feel.”

  His gentle but insistent fingers, and the confidence with which he touches me, tells me that he does know. In passion, there is little room for doubt.

  I pull away from him, almost afraid of my desire, not wanting this moment to be over too soon. I take his hand from my thighs and guide it to his cock, and then place my own hand over it and move it, so that he is now stroking himself, gently and teasingly. He gives a small mumble of pleasure, and I lean closer to him as the storm outside comes closer and the thunder grows louder.

  “So stiff, so ready,” I murmur. “Do you want to come?”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  I manipulate his hand harder and faster, increasing the intensity, and he sighs. Then, just as I sense him nearing orgasm, I pull his hand away, and he makes a little sound of protest. I take his balls in my hand and gently pull them down, and he grunts.

  “Not yet,” I say, and smack his backside hard. My palm makes a sharp slapping sound as it hits his wet flesh, which echoes around the enclosed shower cubicle. “Not until you’ve given me pleasure. Then, if you’ve been good, I might let you come. Get down on your knees.”

  He slips down into a kneeling position, and looks up at me, his face full of desire and pleading. I smile down at him and spread my legs, leaning back against the shower wall so that I’m open to him.

  “Now,” I say, “kiss me, and lick me.”

  He begins to nuzzle and kiss the inside of my thighs, soft little kisses that give rise to starbursts of sensation on my skin. His mouth moves higher up, until it reaches the point where my thighs meet. I feel his breath, warm and tingling, against the most sensitive part of my body. He runs his lips over the entrance to my vagina, and then slips his tongue inside, and I feel it, soft and sly, moving over my flesh. He runs it gently around the inside of my cunt and then moves inwards, slowly, until at last he reaches my hard, pulsing clitoris. His tongue rouses me to new levels of passion; I brace my body against the shower wall and moan as throbbing waves of pleasure course through my body. His tongue moves more firmly and insistently, taking me higher, until I feel the sensation concentrating on one tight, hot, pulsing point between my legs.

  “No,” I say and, lifting my right foot and putting it on his shoulder, I push him gently away. He leans back and looks up at me again, and his eyes are hot with yearning.

  “Stand up,” I breathe. He places his palms down on the wet shower floor and eases himself up, a little awkwardly. We kiss again. We are both breathless with desire and hungry for each other. I turn around so that my back is pressed against his chest and belly, and open my legs slightly so that his cock slides between them. Then I clamp my wet thighs around him, and we begin to move back and forth, so that his cock slides between my legs. I look down and see the tip emerging from between my thighs, disappearing, emerging again. I push my body down slightly, so that his shaft slides between the lips of my cunt and rubs against my clitoris. His hands slide up my belly and cup my breasts, and his thumbs stray upwards to circle my nipples. I feel his mouth grazing the side of my neck, and he kisses me, his harsh breath tickling my skin, as his rhythm increases. Outside, the storm breaks out in a fury: there is constant thunder, insane bursts of light. Rain hurls itself against the window.

  “Wait,” I cry. “Stop.” I step away from him, and he moans as his cock slides out from between my legs. I step behind him and, pressing my body against his, reach around and slide my hands down his chest and belly. I move them further down, and begin to cradle and stroke his cock. I feel it slipping through my palms, urgent and throbbing, craving release. I stroke and knead him, willing him to derive every last drop of pleasure from the experience.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I whisper into his ear. “So, so beautiful.”

  He moans, perhaps allowing himself to believe me in this moment of pleasure. He lifts his chin, and his expression is somewhere between ecstasy and pain, as if my gently stroking hands were a form of torture. I stroke harder, grasping him firmly, and his hips give a violent jerk, and he cries out as he comes. His hot semen spurts out into the cupped palm of my left hand. He strains back against me, and then leans forward, hands against the shower wall, gasping, almost sobbing. Outside, the rain is weakening, the thunder retreating.

  “Turn around,” I tell him, when he has steadied himself. He turns to face me, dazed with sex and release, eyes hooded, body slow.

  “Now,” I say, “I want you to taste yourself.”

  I dip the fingers of my right hand into the small pool of semen in my left palm, and lift them to his lips. His tongue darts out and licks it up, and then his mouth closes over my index finger. He sucks, and his sleepy eyes meet mine. I drag my finger out of his mouth and trace the shape of his lips. I kiss him, tasting him, wanting him.

  “How perfect you are,” I whisper. “I want to know every part of you. I want to lose myself in you.”

  I don’t really expect him to reply to this, and so when he remains silent I feel only a slight sense of disappointment. We know the rules of this strange, wayward game, he and I. We never speak of love. We never say “forever”.

  ~

  Or so I think, anyway; but later, when we’re lying on the bed in the dreamtime that follows sex, he suddenly says, “We’ve been foolish, haven’t we, you and I?”

  “In what way?” I ask.

  “We thought that none of this had to matter. We thought we could have our little bit of fun, and then walk away and be none the worse for it. But these things change you. The person you become is not the person you were.”

  “Everything you experience changes you,” I say, cautiously.

  “Some things more than others.” He looks up at the ceiling. “I’ve never been a very honest person, you know. Not with other people, and not even with myself. I’ve spent years lying to myself, telling myself that I was just another ordinary bloke, content with an ordinary life – or what we’re told is ordinary, anyway. But there was always this secret side. A dark stream flowing just beneath the surface.”

  “Submission?”

  “That. And other things besides.”

  “Such as?”

  “Almost everything I’ve ever felt. Do you know the first time I wondered if I’d made a mistake in marrying my wife? On our honeymoon. God, I remember it so well. We were staying in this castle in Scotland, and we’d been out somewhere, and something had gone wrong – it had started raining, or we’d run out of money, something like that. And she was furious. She didn’t bother to hide it, either. We got out of the car and started to walk back to the hotel, and she was stamping away, a few feet ahead of me, face like thunder. I just followed her; I didn’t know what else to do. And all the time there was this scared little voice whispering away in my mind: You’ve made a terrible mistake. You’ve been married for two weeks, and already you want a divorce. And then I thought: All right, it’s bad, but it’s not a calamity. We’ll just get a quick divorce and go our separate ways, and everything’ll be okay. And do you know what happened next?”

  I smile, a little bi
tterly. “You ended up staying.”

  “Right. We made up that evening, and I thought, God, it was just an argument, don’t be so bloody melodramatic. I think I knew otherwise, though, even if I didn’t want to admit it. But I stuck around anyway – stuck around for years, pretending that everything was all right, and having a couple of kids as if to prove it.”

  “You can’t regret that, surely.”

  “No, of course not,” he says quietly; and then we fall silent for a little while.

  In many ways I love this quiet, shadowy time more than anything. Neil is at his ease, I am no longer his Mistress, and the games are forgotten. Now, we are just a man and a woman, lying down together among these tangled sheets, and perhaps attempting to forge a deeper connection than just sex. He’s never spoken so freely before, though, or hinted at so much, and I don’t know whether to be pleased or terrified.

  What he says about his marriage reminds me of some of my own past relationships. That sick feeling that you’ve made a mistake, and hoping that it isn’t true even though you know that it is. The way you can waste years pretending that everything is all right. And the way that, when the grey shadow of normality and respectability steals over you, you can either submit to it or turn your back on it. Normality, though, is only a loosely defined set of averages, and averages are a poor fit for any individual. No average takes account of an individual’s bumps and irregularities. If you’re lucky, it’ll fit well enough not to be too uncomfortable; if you’re unlucky, like Neil and me, it’ll choke the life slowly out of you.

  Perhaps James Sallow felt something like this while he was watching Diane’s belly swell, coming home and watching a woman pattering around in his sterile kitchen and lying down on his bed, a woman who had no intention of leaving. He always considered himself a case apart, a member of an elite. It wasn’t for him, the plodding business of tending to a marriage and raising kids – not when he had the money to have as much sex, as many women and adventures, as he wanted. He’d walked blindly into his relationship with Diane, without much thought for the consequences, and then he saw the prison door swinging shut on his life. And perhaps that sense of panic and fear drove him mad, and spurred him to do something he would never normally have done. If that’s the case, then I can almost – almost – understand him. Because I remember times when I felt imprisoned too, and how I’d have done almost anything to break free.

  I wouldn’t have killed someone, though. I would never have done that.

  By my side, Neil stirs and sighs, cutting the thread of my thoughts.

  “You don’t know what it means, to be a parent,” he says. “You don’t know what real love is, until you have a child. You’d die for that person, without question, without hesitation. If I had to jump off a tall building or lie down on a railway line for my daughters, I wouldn’t think twice about it. But, oh God, if there’s just one thing that does scare me, it’s the prospect of a slow, living death.”

  “Me too,” I say. I sit up, and hand him one of the glasses of wine that sit on the bedside table. Sharing a drink after sex has become one of our rituals. “What does that mean for you, though?”

  “Hard to say, in general. In particular, though: marriage to a woman I don’t love; pretending to be somebody I’m not; letting my life slip away and trying to pretend that I don’t even care.”

  “You don’t have to do it.”

  “Perhaps I do. Perhaps that’s what’s best for my kids.” Neil takes a gulp of wine – he’s been drinking a lot recently, I suspect – and grimaces. “I often think, you know, that I’ve been a poor excuse for a father. Working all the hours that God sends, and then going home to all those arguments, and now not going home at all. Living in a different part of the city, and nothing resolved. Not much to feel proud of, is it?”

  “You’ve done your best,” I say, and then, when he doesn’t respond, I add: “You and your wife, then – is there any chance of a reconciliation?”

  He stares out of the window – the storm is over, and a weak evening sun has started to leak out from behind the clouds – and for a moment I think he’s going to tell me to mind my own business. Then he shrugs. “There’s a chance, I suppose. If that’s what she wants.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I really don’t know.” He takes another savage gulp of wine. “I left home so that I could think things over. What a joke. I’ve been thinking for months, and I still haven’t reached any conclusions. I don’t know. I keep hoping she’ll make the decision for me.”

  “You have to make your own decision.”

  He laughs, utterly without humour. “You might have noticed that I’m the passive type.”

  “You can’t afford to be passive. Not now. Not in this.”

  He gives me a narrow sideways glance, and for a moment I glimpse a side of him that I rarely see: the detective, the man who picks at the seams of human behaviour and human motivations. Suddenly, he is not the gentle, unresisting man I think I know, but a stranger – a stranger of great cunning and tremendous insight.

  “Really?” he says, quietly. “If we were together, you and I – really together – that’s how you’d want me to be, isn’t it?”

  I give him a long look.

  “No,” I say at last. “No, it isn’t.”

  A taut silence stretches out between us. My heart twitches at the thought of us being together, and at knowing that he has thought of this too. But even as these ideas race through my mind, they are overtaken by cold realism. An impossible fantasy: we’re flying parallel now, but in the future we’ll follow completely different trajectories. We have no future together. We don’t even really know each other; we haven’t even been out on a proper date, still less spent much time together. No sooner have I imagined this dream scenario than it disperses like mist, as theoretical and improbable as time travel, or the sun not rising tomorrow morning.

  “God, sorry,” Neil mumbles. “That was unfair of me. You’ve never told me what to do outside the bedroom.”

  “You’re your own man. And we’re not together.”

  “Not in any meaningful sense.” He turns to look out of the window again. “So why even waste time thinking about it?”

  His mouth has turned down at the corners, and suddenly he looks older, and careworn.

  To distract him and myself, I start to tell him about my visit to Mr Walsh. He knows, of course, that I continue to nibble, rat-like, at the facts surrounding Diane’s disappearance; he knows how significant the case is for me, though he does not yet really know why. He raises his eyebrows when I tell him about how I found out Mr Walsh’s address, and how I persuaded him to talk to me by pretending to be my own dead colleague.

  “That’s a very dubious way to go about getting information, Katherine,” he says. “It’s deception.”

  “It was all in a good cause, and it didn’t do any harm.”

  “That isn’t really the point, and you know it.”

  “I did it for the best of reasons.”

  “Well, maybe. It didn’t do you much good, though, did it? He didn’t tell you anything new.”

  “He told me about seeing Sallow at six o’clock on the morning that Diane disappeared. A very dirty Sallow, who looked like he’d been doing far more than buying cigarettes.”

  “The police knew about that. They asked Sallow about it, and he gave a perfectly plausible explanation for it.”

  “Mr Walsh didn’t believe his explanation, and neither do I. Neither do you.”

  “Belief doesn’t come into it. The point is that it doesn’t constitute proof.” Neil looks around and frowns at me. “You’ve got to face facts, Katherine. If the Met couldn’t get to the bottom of this case, there’s very little chance that you can.”

  “You’re probably right, but I have to keep trying. I owe it to Diane.”

  “Why?”

  I shrug. “Someone has to look out for her, even if she is dead. And it might as well be me.”

  I don’t want t
o admit the real reason, or say what lies behind my obsession. It’s not that I’m ashamed of the truth; it’s just that I’ve learned that the truth, like all valuable things, must sometimes be guarded well. I rarely lie, but nor am I truthful at all costs. Like Neil, I have never been a particularly honest person, but I am at least trying to be honest with myself.

  ~

  I dream of Diane that night, as I often do. Her ghost may not walk the earth, but it flits around ceaselessly in the chambers of my brain. Like residual light from an extinct star, she can be seen even now, long after she herself has gone. Is this immortality, or simply an imitation of it?

  There is little sense or sequence in this dream. In one small splinter of narrative, I am sitting on the grass in a park on a sunny day, watching as Diane plays with Goldie, throwing a stick for the dog to retrieve. She is just metres away from me, yet she seems unaware of my presence. I do not call out to her, or do anything to alert her to my being there. Even in my dream, I am aware on some level that she is dead: if I approach her or speak to her, I fear that she will crumble in front of my very eyes, as those who stray between worlds in fairytales are said to do.

  In another fragmentary story, she is sitting opposite me in the living room in my flat, just down the hallway from where I am sleeping, a place that she never visited in life. She is holding an empty drinking glass, turning it around in her hands as though it is an item of the utmost fascination. She looks up and peers out of the window, and grey London daylight falls over her sad face. She is pale, as she always was; her chestnut hair falls to her shoulders in loose waves, and her face is bare of make-up. Her grey-blue eyes follow a bird as it flits past the window, and then she turns to me.

  “I’m dead,” she tells me, quite calmly, as if it is a matter of no consequence whatsoever.