A Dark Beginning: A China Dark Novel (18 page)

Their eyes held each other for a few moments and she squeezed Philip’s hand tighter. The man was smiling. It was a smile of pure poise and coolness that didn’t just border on self-confidence, but leapt right over the line and into a realm of stratospheric arrogance. His eyes were intense and she was the centre of his world. In the whole restaurant it was her that his gaze lingered on.

‘Oh no, not the eyes again’, China thought, momentarily thinking of Mark for the first time that day.

Esta was already drunk when she entered the pub. Mark had told her that this was where he worked but he didn't seem to be about. Never mind. She would wait. It had been a good evening, she had made excellent money but now she needed a fuck. The frustration had built up as the evening had gone on. Her body had reacted increasingly to the touches from the punters, feeding off their lust, but she fancied none of them. 

"Is Mark about this evening?" she asked the well-built older barman. He was not bad looking for his age and looked very strong. Maybe he would get lucky if Mark wasn't about. He was too old for her, she scolded herself. She shouldn't let her frustrations get the better of her. Her standards may be a little lax but she should try not to degrade herself purely for a quickie. 

"Not yet, darling. He might be in later though." He did have quite a nice smile, and his arms looked big and very strong. But no. A little self control. A few too many vodkas provided a strong counter argument but she could handle her drink so wouldn't let her alcohol-damaged morality win the evening over. "Can I get you a drink?"

"A vodka will do nicely." After all, you can never have too much vodka.

"Straight?"

"Always," she responded, unable to keep a naughty smirk from her lips.

She paid from the large wad of notes in her purse. It had been a very profitable evening. Manipulating men for money was a satisfying business. Some might think the sacrifice of dignity too high a price to pay, but she knew better. Her dignity was well and truly intact. It was not her dribbling like an imbecile, panting like a dog and handing over a large percentage of disposable (or in many cases, not so disposable) income. She was an actress who was using her gifts wisely so she deserved a nice little payday from time to time. 

Sensing another person beside her she quickly tucked the money back in her purse and stowed it in her brown leather satchel. 

"Oh, I'm too late. But let me get you the next one." Turning to face the stranger her control wasn't quite quick enough to hide the distaste from her face. 

He either didn't notice her disdain, was too drunk, or too used to it to react, and kept a huge sloppy grin on his chubby face. His forehead shone under the low nicotine tainted light of the bar, and Esta could see actual beads of sweat all over his face and neck. The dirty collar of his shirt looked soaking wet, and she wasn't sure if the thin strands of hair pulled tightly back into a ponytail were wet from being recently washed or just so greasy that they looked permanently wet. She suspected the latter. 

"What do you want?" she slurred, her tolerance low. 

"Just to buy a pretty lady a drink. I've not seen you in here before. You're so pretty I would have remembered." If anything, he sounded more inebriated than her and she relaxed a bit. She was quite capable of dealing with drunken sleaze bags like this. 

"Thank you, but I'm waiting for someone."

"Lucky someone!"

"Yes they are," she managed a smile that never reached beyond her mouth. 

"You could be a model you know. I bet you are a model." He was persistent, she would give him that.

"That's corny. You need to work on this approach."

"Seriously," he said, leaning in conspiratorially close to spit out a whisper. "I should know. I'm a photographer."

"Oh yes? I'm sure you are. Do you tell every girl that?"

"I can prove it." For the first time he looked a bit hurt. Or was it actually anger? Esta was beginning to wonder if she should just leave.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle of dog-eared pictures.

This time Esta did manage to contain her reaction, but only just. A cold finger of fear ran down her back as she recognized several of the girls in the pictures. One was of China, who she had met just a short while ago with Mark, another was of Zilda, including the very photo that she recognized from Mark’s sitting room wall. She was pretty sure that the pictures had been taken by Mark, so why was this man passing them off as his own? There was something very wrong here and it was beginning to scare her.

“You see how beautiful I make these girls look. I can do the same for you.”

She laughed nervously, “So, you don’t think I’m beautiful already?”

“Of course you are. I’ve told you haven’t I? But I can make you look even more beautiful. More elegant. Less… er….” He waved a floppy hand up and down in a dismissive gesture.

Despite the dread coursing through her, Esta’s temper rose at this oily man’s disrespect. “Less what exactly?”

“Well,” he said, his own anger rising in defence. “Less tarty. Less like a stripper.”

Just at that point the barman came over. “Hey, Tony, leave the girl alone.” He obviously didn’t like Tony at all, and Esta suspected that this was not an uncommon feeling. “She’s one of Mark’s friends.” At the mention of Mark, Esta was gratified to see a look of sheer panic cross Tony’s fat face. He went beetroot red and seemed to sweat even more. He quickly stuffed the photographs back into his jacket, muttered something vaguely obscene under his breath and waddled away around the corner of the bar and out of site. “Sorry about Tony. He’s harmless but he is a creep.”

“That’s ok,” Esta said, although her brain wasn’t really working properly. She was still desperately trying to work out why Tony had the pictures that Mark had taken, let alone why he was trying to pass them off as his own to try and get her to pose for him. If she hadn’t known Mark, hadn’t known the subjects of his photographs, she might have been conned, and so might other girls. But then she reminded herself how physically repulsive the man was and consoled herself that even if girls were fooled by the lines he spun, they’d be unlikely to take him up on his sleazy offer unless they were really stupid or really desperate. Still, it left a nasty taste in her mouth and she suddenly found that she no longer wanted a fuck. She just wanted to get back to the flat she shared with three other girls, and make a call to her husband.

Half in a dream, thinking about her small but tidy home back in Romania, she left the pub to walk back to her flat.

He saw the young girl walk out of the pub, her fit, petite frame silhouetted sharply against the warm amber glow of the doorway, and kept very still in the shadow of the bus stop. He hoped she wouldn’t walk over to catch a bus, but he thought that highly unlikely. She didn’t live that far away. When he had followed her home from her place of work before, the first time only a couple of weeks ago, he had made a careful note of the location and his inner map knew the best route to there from anywhere local. He worked well in the dark. He prided himself on an in-built satnav that wouldn’t be fooled by day or night. His eyesight was good, his inner compass steady, his walk silent and his hand strong. He had been blessed with the tools necessary to carry out his mission, which is why he knew he was doing the right thing.

He didn’t have to rush this. The girl could get a little way ahead. Probably best if she did so that he could follow without any risk of being detected. He knew where best to strike. As long as he was close enough when the time came, that’s all he prayed for.

Watching at this distance he admired her body. It was an object of beauty. Not far from perfection. Wasted on this faithless slut. As she turned the corner ahead and started to walk up the main road he followed, his pace innocently casual. Nothing to see here, he thought, just a man out for an evening stroll. As he approached the corner she had just turned he saw that she was about a hundred yards ahead. He had judged it just right. He was good at this.

His pace increased slightly and he tucked his chin into his chest, looking down at the pavement, not needing to look up, knowing where she was at any point. There was only one sensible route from here to her flat, and she would not deviate.

By the time he reached the next turning he was only twenty yards behind her, but there were enough people about at that hour of the evening that he would not be noticed. This side road she was now in was a little quieter, and quite short. She only had to walk about fifty yards before turning again. He slipped into a side alley that quickly twisted and ran parallel with the road she was walking down. He passed swiftly, silently, down the alley, feet making no sound, until he judged that he was actually ahead of her. Passing between two gardens, up a passageway barely wide enough for his shoulders, he took a deep breath and waited in the shadows. He listened carefully. The only sounds from the street were her lone footsteps, her stripper heels clicking noisily along the pavement.

Just as she walked past the entrance to the passage he reached out and grabbed her by the neck, surprising her so much that he was able to easily drag her into the alley. His fingers were iron on her throat, choking off any cry for help. He pressed her back against the house wall so she had nowhere to back away to, to relieve the pressure on her neck. He was strong enough to grip her with a single hand so with the other he reached around behind his back. Her eyes were bulging out of her head and her mouth open, as she desperately reached for air, not even a cough could escape. He could smell her fear, an exciting zest that riddled her cheap, sickly-sweet perfume with lustful aromas. Quick as fire he flashed the sharp blade across her smooth white neck. He saw her eyes register the comet-trail flash of the knife as it arced towards her neck and was pleased to note her sheer terror as death approached.

Her heels kicked against the wall of the house and prudency told him he would need to leave the scene very quickly. As the hot tide of blood flooded over his gloves he watched the life drain out of her and her eyes glaze. He leant forward and delicately kissed her forehead, while she was still just conscious enough to note this last benevolent act in her sordid life, a touch of gentleness and love at the end of such depravity. A kiss to send her on her way to judgment. Then he lowered her gently to the ground and swiftly ran back the way he had come. He stripped off the gloves but kept them for now. He would discard those in a safer place much later.

As she lay in bed that night, China snuggled closely up to Philip’s naked body and the air conditioning was at just the right level to make that bearable without them both melting into puddles of sweat. She rested her head on his broad back, sighing.

“Enjoy today?” he asked.

“It was wonderful,” she said. Planting a delicate kiss on the nape of his neck. “I love you, Philip Dark.”

“And I love you too, China Dark.” He turned over to lie on his back and pull her head to rest on his chest. “You looked stunning today.”

She giggled. “Thank you, but you’re biased.”

“Well, yes. I am, that’s true. But I’m not the only one who thought you looked good.”

China smiled. She had noticed that too. All day she had been receiving admiring glances. She wasn’t deluded enough to believe she was classically beautiful, but she hoped that her newfound confidence and simple self awareness of how she looked in certain clothes, from certain angles and by giving a certain look, all went towards explaining this increased attention she was getting. She was discovering that confidence was an attractive quality to men. Always know where the camera lens is, Mark would have said. Imagine what it sees, and make sure it’s seeing something good.

China kissed Philip’s chest and gripped him even tighter.

“That man in the bar couldn’t take his eyes off of you.”

“I still reckon he’s a prick.”

Philip laughed. “Maybe, but I don’t suppose he cares what anyone thinks of him. He must be loaded. That car!”

“Being rich doesn’t give you the right to be a prick.”

“Maybe not, but I bet he could have any woman he wanted.”

“Well not me,” she said. “I’m a one man woman.” She stroked Philip’s flat stomach and kissed his chest again, this time a little harder to emphasise her point. It worried her how easily the lie came, and she wondered sadly if her father had also lied so easily to her mother. Was her need for attention genetic? Was the capability of dealing with such a dual lifestyle also inherited? Or had she subliminally picked up on her parents’ relationship dynamics, building an inner model of what was normal, a model which had finally lured her into its strange and erotic world?

“That’s a shame,” Philip said, interrupting these deep deliberations. Not that again, she thought, afraid more of her own reaction to such easily validated temptations. The holiday had been so romantic so far, cementing her love for Philip and the true happiness in her marriage, allowing her the possibility of distancing herself from the alternative lifestyle that had drawn her into its clutches in recent days. In the last few weeks she had been concerned that her own behaviour, whether prompted by Philip or not, had been the result of some deep-seated and not fully understood unhappiness with her relationship with her husband. She had now started to convince herself that this was not the case, and was beginning to believe it was related more to her parents’ example. There was nothing wrong with her marriage and she loved Philip with all of her heart. The other ‘activities’ had been a mere distraction. She had hoped they were a minor transgression, as part of an exploration of new experiences and an exorcising of repressed demons, a necessary purging. She could readily accept that these were all essential elements on the path that led to where she was right now. A China Dark she was happy with, not beautiful but attractive, not arrogant but confident. With a rediscovered healthy sexual appetite and totally self-aware. She didn’t want to go back to the old China, the one that had existed prior to meeting Mark, but she was also scared and she didn’t know if she wanted to repeat the steep pathway that had brought her to this point. Exciting through that descent into sexual madness had been.

She stayed silent, hoping Philip would take the hint. He didn’t.

“He wanted you. Out of all of the women in that restaurant tonight, it was you he wanted.”

She suddenly wanted to slap him. Hard.

“We’re on holiday. If you wanted to..”

“I don’t,” she whispered loudly, not wanting to wake the whole hotel up, though she felt like screaming. This made her even more angry, having to repress the need to shout at Philip. She was sitting up now, looking angrily down at him. “I love you. God knows why. You can be so stupid. But I don’t want another man.”

As she said this her brain was in a spin. She wanted to shout with frustration. The first, full, blissful day of the holiday was ruined. Doubt swept through her again. True, when she thought about the stranger in the bar it did send a subtle quiver through her body and mind. He was just so… male, so gorgeous. An arrogant boy who needed taking down a peg or two, and it would be fun to do that she knew. Philip was infuriating but she loved him, even now in the midst of anger she knew that. And he had just sent her another not so subtle signal, one that at the start of this holiday she had hoped to see.

“I’m sorry, China,” Philip said, realizing he had spoiled the mood. He sat up and placed an arm around her cold shoulders, pulling her rigid body to his. “You know what I’m like. I’m an idiot.”

“Yes, you are.” She lay back down and tried to go to sleep, her back towards her husband.

Neither of them mentioned this conversation the next day, but there was a noticeable shadow hanging over them. All the right things were said, they still held hands as they wandered around a quaintly pretty and charmingly medieval local village, and they smiled and nodded at each other’s conversation as they ate their meals. China wondered if the atmosphere for the whole holiday was ruined. If it was to be saved she must do her part. She must overcome her disappointment with Philip at his raking up of old fantasies, just as she was sinking into the warm duvet of romantic bliss. She knew Philip would be eager for a more lasting reconciliation and that it was up to her to let him off the hook. She needed a drink.

They drank some Prosecco in their room while they prepared in near silence for the evening meal. China looked through her wardrobe a couple of times before settling on a flimsy dress in pastel shades that only just hid her lacy underwear. She liked the way it moved around her body. It felt so light that she had to keep checking it was there, and her slightest movement would send it into sprays of material waves. It made her want to move just to create the elusive dance of light and fabric that resulted. She had drunk a lot more of the bottle of wine than Philip had, and he was still in the doghouse. She did feel quite tipsy and more ready to either forgive Philip, or maybe blast him with some more anger. She wasn’t sure which it would be yet. He’d just have to wait. Either way she was sure that she, at least, would enjoy it.