She plans to put her mouth somewhere else now.
Hattie seems surprised as Anika squats down low. She shuffles Hattie’s form-fitting skirt up over her hips until she’s face-to-face with black lace. ‘Yeah?’ she asks, looking up at her friend.
‘Definitely.’
The damp warmth of Anika’s mouth matches what she finds between Hattie’s legs as she open-mouth kisses her over her panties, then pulls them to one side and licks hard. She grins when Hattie groans, and Anika pulls back for a second to chide her with a wink. ‘Shh.’ Hattie claps a hand over her mouth.
The taste of her is salt and cream, unexpected and delicious. Anika sets to work with her tongue, marvelling at the difference in pleasuring a woman – the softness, the burning heat, the tang of tasting someoneinside, smooth and undulating. Hattie’s other hand grips a fistful of Anika’s hair, her body tightening and relaxing then tightening again around the two fingers Anika’s slipped inside her until she whimpers long and high, her legs trembling into her orgasm. Anika stands up as Hattie eventually places her high heel back on the floor from where she hiked her leg up over Anika’s shoulder, and they both laugh again, straighten their clothes and finally relinquish the stall.
Twenty minutes later Anika has said her goodbyes and is in a cab home, alone, still buzzing from the elation of once againsatisfying her needs with the help of the diary.Why did I never think of this before?
She’s struck, though, with a memory of the past – of the very moment when she gave up writing in the diary before. She was too young, lacking control over how she was perceived or desired. Nothing like she is now.
It was at the end of that night … But maybe also the start of something she’s only just been able to return to, and hopefully release.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
That Night
Saturday July 4th 2009
‘Just go.’ Kwame held her gaze for a beat before turning away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Anika whispered. Without waiting for his response, she slipped away towards a patch of darkness where a lamp in the park had faltered. Her blood surged in liquid pulses in her ears, sweat plastering her top to her back as she clambered quickly over the fence and into the street, too scared to look back at what might be happening to Eni, Zaya and Kwame.
Tears still prickled Anika’s eyelids as her feet pounded on the concrete, willing herself to seem composed lest she be connected to the scene she had just left. After a while she paused and looked at a street sign, trying to reorient herself. Panting hard into the oppressive fuzz of the summer night air, she dug into her bag again for her mobile. She glanced up furtively as she heard voices across the road, scared it might be the girls from the park. It was another young white girl, whose flip-flops clapped against the pavement as she pulled the lead of a muscular dog. The girl was chatting loudly to a boy with wet-looking hair brushed forward into thin, blunt hanks across his forehead. Anika felt a surge of judgement and fear that was only mildly assuaged when the girl flashed her a smile that seemed like a greeting, but might also have been a threat.
She pressed a button on her phone to make out the time. It wasn’t that late, but it was nighttime and she was alone and theair still pulsed with the violence she’d witnessed. Anika’s brain sent out sonar-waves of awareness as she dialled her uncle, moving back towards the party house with what she hoped was purposeful-seeming strides. A near-silent ‘ah’ of relief escaped her lips when she heard him answer.
‘Uncle?’
‘Yes, my dear. How are you?’ he greeted with his usual lackadaisical air. Anika tried to sound unhurried as she explained she was ready to be collected.
‘Ah hah. Give me … ten, fifteen minutes, my dear,’ he said, the tinny sound of highlife jangling underneath his words from his taxi stereo. Anika looked up and down the street. TVs glowed in houses. A woman wearing slippers sat on her front-garden wall, smoking a cigarette. But fifteen minutes was longer than it would take to just keep moving, towards home,awayfrom everything that had happened that night.
‘Um … Actually, don’t worry, Uncle. I’ll … My friend’s mum is just getting here; she can give me a lift. Don’t worry, yeah?’
‘Ah, OK. You’re sure?’
It was another choice. She’d made it now. ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I’ll see you soon, OK? Thanks, Uncle.’
A lack of conviction in her spontaneity urged Anika’s feet to move faster. She peered again at the street signs, looking out for familiar landmarks. She hoped her mum wouldn’t be watching out for the headlights of Uncle Ernest’s cab dropping her home, but again remembered that at least it wouldn’t be a blue-light-topped saloon. Should she ring ahead, though, to give the illusion of having company to those lurking around her?
Anika decided her mum would sense the disobedience if she called. She reached into her bag again and gripped her keys to stick out in between her fingers, on edge although it was barely quarter to eleven. Thoughts of Kwame and Eni and Zaya pinballed in her mind. Was Zaya going to be OK? Anika stiffenedas a group of three girls in short Lycra dresses who she vaguely recognised from the party linked arms and stumbled in the opposite direction up the road, yelling exaggerated greetings at Anika. She ignored them. Every encounter was throwing her comfort off balance. But she was less than five minutes away from home now, surely. Soon she could shut the door on this whole night. Just as she thought it, the weak yellow glow of the corner shop’s dilapidated sign came into view. Somehow she’d come to her road. Relief flooded her, and she—
‘Y’all right, darlin’?’ The bass-laden voice made her jolt. She hadn’t noticed the man leaning against a wall nearby until she turned and saw a figure in a dark tracksuit, the thin cord of a white stripe down its sides only just visible. Even as she ignored his comment, she knew he would follow. Anika’s mouth went dry and she concentrated on keeping one foot moving in front of the other. He pushed off to easily catch her pace and locked step beside her. The pungent smell of weed hit Anika’s nostrils as he flicked the spent end of his zoot onto the pavement in front of them. It hit the concrete with a final spark. Her gaze tunnelled towards the haven of the shop, to the safety of her home.
‘You don’t hear me, sweetie? You look good, you know …’
Anika focused every little bit of her essence into exudingfuck offbut kept her pace steady, her eyes straight, lips clamped shut. Even so, in the periphery of her vision she caught the glint of intermittent gold teeth in the man’s mouth – a sneer, a smile, she wasn’t sure.
Time dragged down into half speed as Anika felt the man’s rough, hot hand clench around the bare skin of her arm. She looked down, seeing each of his fingers, only a shade darker than her own, encircling her flesh with creeping slowness. She felt outside of herself, running scenarios of what could happen next.
I could scream.
He could punch me, knock me out.
He might …
