She comes without me being completely cognizant of it. Hard and long, her body thrashing under mine, meaning I have to hold her still as I carry on fucking her, keeping up the pace that I need to find my release.
When she stops, I speed up, my hands slipping down her body to her hips, my thrusts faster, her tits bouncing. The noise that comes from my throat when I ejaculate is a howl. It’s a word that I don’t recognise, a sound almost guttural. Base.
My arms brace my body over hers. She’s breathless and clutching onto my arms, the rest of her body limp. Her eyes are filled with satisfaction and her smile is wicked. Sinful.
This is no princess that I’ve just fucked; this is an angel from Hades.
I press my forehead to hers and say the words; probably the wrong time to say them, probably the wrong tone of voice, but I haven’t done this before.
She bites my shoulder and I sink down next to her, pulling her as close to my body as I can.
“It’s me and you.” She nuzzles my chest. “Can we do that?”
“Yes.” Guilt bites at me with sharp teeth.
I don’t sleep well. Too many thoughts crowd my brain and before sunrise I get up and head outside, needing milk and an early newspaper. As I cross the street to get to the store I look up to a skyscraper of apartments. On the second floor a man stands at a balcony, shirtless even though February is still cold.
His hair is fair and mussed, his chin covered with stubble dense enough to be a beard and his arms are thick and muscular.
I stop and stare, even though I’m in the middle of a road and although its early, there are still the couriers and the taxi drivers.
But the man has captured my concentration.
I know him.
He’s still alive.
Chapter Ten
Iwasn’t the perfect student. Lessons were easy; I had a good memory and because my mother spent hours reading to me as a small kid, I processed quickly. So I was bored and not really interested in things like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand or the economy of Australia. I wanted to be outside, taming the ocean or fighting. So much fighting. I got picked on because my mother wasn’t the sort of mum that other families associated with; she spent too much time at St Nectern’s Glen, placing libations around trees and ran a witchety shop. And she took in men.
Ivy and I never saw them, but we heard the rumours. Never the noises; we were never there. Our cottage had an outhouse and that was where she’d entertain, usually a gentleman for a week at a time, and never more than three or four a year. Now I know she corresponded with them. She was a mistress, kept by some of them but it was never enough, and when Ivy was around four she stopped altogether. I think she fell in love and never fell out of it, but I have no idea who with.
It wasn’t until Ivy started getting picked on by the older boys and girls that I started fighting. I didn’t give a shit what they said – there wasn’t much that I cared about – but Ivy did. They called Ivy because of our mother, and then because of her – she had something that others didn’t.
Ivy was that girl from day one. The one everyone stared at because she had a pixie-like prettiness. Then she grew and it became more. The girls hated her because of how she looked and she was clever and the boys betted on who would take her virginity. They speculated that she was like our mother and they could pay for it. That was when I started to fight hard.
Most of the end of my high school days were spent outside the head teacher’s office, waiting to hear if I had yet another suspension. I passed my exams at sixteen with top grades, mainly because I had nothing else to do while I sat outside that pokey office than revise and read about Franz Ferdinand and the war in Vietnam and memorise science formulas.
The head teacher never permanently excluded me. There would’ve been no other school for me to go and they needed my grades for their statistics, so it worked out for both of us. Until I was sixteen and my father transported me to a private sixth form where I felt as foreign as a piece of plastic in the sand on the beach.
I have that feeling now, as I stand outside Micky’s office, having made the journey from the south yet again but this time it’s personal. Blair doesn’t know I’m here; she’s in Dublin, in talks over there and visiting various sites. She doesn’t know that I’m no longer part of William’s team, that when he told me it was over, I didn’t argue.
That I haven’t answered my father’s calls.
That I’ve spent at least four evenings at my grandfather’s grave praying for forgiveness to the only man who ever really mattered, apart from one other.
Micky’s office door is shut. He knows I’m here because the man is god and knows every fucking thing. I can hear him on the phone and I know he’s dragging the conversation out as long as he can because it’s a form of torture.
But he has something I need.
The door finally opens and he grins at me, the two false teeth he usually wears aren’t in today, which means he’s not expecting any company.
“It’s a bonny wee lad come to see me. Have you brought me a gift?”
I shake my head and pass him in the door way. He laughs.
“I need you to do something for me.”
