Eighty Days Amber (31 page)

‘Viggo, don’t be foolish. They’ll come for you,’ I pleaded. ‘These men do not take lightly to humiliation.’

‘They might do if they had the faintest idea that I was involved. But as far as anyone knows, I’m playing another last-minute live charity gig at an underground bar in Brighton. Look,’ he said, showing me his mobile phone with a web link to a live camera. ‘I gave a Viggo impersonator the gig of a lifetime, and a massive payout, of course. Ain’t he doing a grand job?’

On the tiny screen, a reed-like man with a mop of teased-out hair and long legs encased in Viggo’s trademark skinny jeans was gyrating and miming his heart out as the audience screamed the house down, entirely unaware that their hero was not even in the country, let alone in the building.

‘I might employ him more often,’ he added. ‘Just imagine; I’d never need to work again.’

‘Three, two, one!’ screamed a group of drunken lads who
were trying and failing to navigate from one side of the street to another without tumbling over.

The clock struck one, another year had now begun.

Chey pulled me into a tight embrace and locked his mouth to mine. I could have happily spent the next three hundred and sixty-five days engaged in that kiss.

‘Get a room!’ Lauralynn yelled, checking that we had all of our belongings packed up and our disguises were in order. ‘And get out. You have a train to catch.’

We waved the pair of them away for the last time and stood together on the platform, hand in hand.

The lights on the board advertising the next train promised that we would be waiting for five more minutes.

Silence surrounded us like a fog, and I could not think of a single word that felt important enough to break it.

‘After a night like that,’ Chey said, eventually, ‘I can’t help but wonder what will happen next.’

‘Whatever comes,’ I replied, ‘it’s no matter to me. So long as I have you.’

He bent his head to mine, and kissed me again.

Epilogue

One Last Dance

The heavy vault door swung shut behind Viggo with a slow hiss.

He smiled in satisfaction, thinking of the prizes that he had added to his collection and imagining the expressions on the faces of the Russian nouveaux riches when they realised that their precious investments had been lifted from under their noses. If the thick necks and dim-witted responses of their security team were anything to go by then they might not even notice at all. As soon as Luba had told him which Russian oligarch they would be performing for, who also had a residence in Dublin, he’d realised it happened to be a well-known fellow collector who’d all too often gazumped him when certain sought-after pieces of stolen art came to market. The opportunity had been an invaluable one and he had seized it.

No doubt about it, the mission had proven a success in every respect. It was a damn shame really that he would never be able to reveal to anyone the precise details of his accomplishment. Of course, the others knew snatches of what he had arranged. They had to be informed so they could play their parts. But he hadn’t revealed the entirety of his scheme to a single soul, so that it could never be used against him, or any of his friends. Viggo sighed. The secrecy was necessary but also a source of regret. His life would
make a wonderful film, he thought, if only he could tell anyone about it.

He imagined himself playing the lead role to a crowd of appreciative onlookers as he made his way up the wood-panelled staircase to the upstairs bedroom where Lauralynn awaited.

‘You’ve been a very naughty boy, haven’t you?’ she said as he entered the room.

‘Yes, Mistress,’ he replied, dropping to his knees and prostrating himself at her stilettoed feet.

‘And what happens to naughty boys?’ she asked.

‘They are punished, Mistress.’

She had spent the past hour closeted in the bathroom, dolling herself up for evening. He had only managed to catch a glimpse of her form before he fell to the floor and now, with his eyes locked onto her shoes, he would have no further opportunity to admire her until she allowed him to. It had been long enough, however, for him to memorise the precise way that her latex catsuit clung to each curve, the particular cut of the long blonde hair that framed her face like a curtain, the rich red of her lips and the regal twist of her smile.

Viggo loved these moments. He’d never been a religious man, but he’d spent his life worshipping beauty in its every manifestation, and here it was embodied in front of him in the form of Lauralynn. And better still, for the next hour or day or lifetime or however long it was that she allowed him to, he could bow down in awe and adulation and receive benediction from a goddess.

Why anyone would choose to visit a priest when women like Lauralynn existed in the world, he truly had no idea.

‘Get up.’

Her voice was cold and uncaring.

Viggo scrambled to his feet.

‘Don’t look at me.’

He kept his eyes lowered, watching the point of her boots as she paced up and down the room.

This was his favourite part. Wondering what she would do next. What new perversities she had dreamed up. Viggo had always had a vivid imagination and a theatrical bent from the time he had been a child, but even his flights of fancy and inventiveness were nothing compared with Lauralynn’s. She was a creative genius when it came to matters of sexuality, he thought proudly.

Sometimes she had him dress up in the most profoundly ridiculous costumes. In memory of Luba she had him don a leotard and a tutu and pirouette around the house like a ballerina.
My private dancer
, she had called him. On another occasion she had saddled him up like a pony and he had carried her from room to room. Once she’d had a friend over for dinner and he had spent the evening on all fours with their plates resting on his back as if he were a makeshift dining-room table while they giggled and gossiped as if he didn’t exist. For a week she had clipped an electro-bracelet around his balls and zapped him with a low-voltage shock via a remote control each time she had fancied watching him jump. He’d taken her out to dinner at Nobu and they’d both smiled when a paparazzi had taken their picture and an article had appeared in a tabloid magazine the following day advertising the ladykiller’s latest squeeze but without any mention of the anal plug that she had forced him to wear almost all evening long.

No one was aware of what Lauralynn and Viggo’s relationship truly entailed. Chey and Luba had been in the
guest bedroom sleeping soundly or fucking loudly and blissfully ignorant of the fact that Viggo was bent over a stool in the bathroom while Lauralynn walloped the hell out of him with the palm of her hand and called him names and made him her sex toy, and he loved every minute of it.

Dagur, the Holy Criminals drummer, had raised a curious eyebrow when he’d come over for a jam session once and nearly sat down on the leather riding crop that Lauralynn had left out in the living room by mistake, but he hadn’t said a word about it.

He’d taken great delight in wearing a latex G-string beneath his jeans one day to a meeting with a group of record company executives and spent the hour grinning to himself as he imagined what the staid old fools would think of him if they only knew what secrets lay beneath his bad boy exterior.

As far as Viggo was concerned, the menu of perverse delights that Lauralynn had served up when she came into his life were just another part of rock ’n’ roll.

He waited patiently to discover what manner of delicious cruelty she had in store for him today.

Finally the tap-tap of her heels striding back and forth on his shining wooden floors came to a halt in front of him.

She reached out her arm and lifted his chin so that his gaze met hers.

‘Kiss me,’ she said.

‘Yes, Mistress,’ Viggo replied, grinning from ear to ear.

The small boat we boarded in Galway was just the initial stage of our journey south. It took us as far as the French coast where we transferred to a larger vessel that was headed to Australia by way of Singapore. We didn’t even set foot
on French soil and were then carried in a small fishing craft to the main vessel just a few miles offshore, with the Brittany coastline a straight line through the mass of grey clouds floating across the waves.

By the time the ship reached Singapore, it felt like an eternity had already come and gone. Isolated from the rest of the world, with just the vast expanse of the sea and its blurred ever-receding horizon as constant companions, we both began to feel safe for the first time in ages. It wasn’t a journey for which tickets could be acquired and our presence on the vessel was semi-illegal so, to avoid advertising our presence on-board to the majority of the unknowing crew, we had to remain in our narrow, claustrophobic cabin during daylight. In the evenings we made our way to the captain’s cabin where we dined with him and two of his subalterns.

The captain was a gruff Dutchman whose pink skin had been scoured by the elements. He was a man of few words. The two officers who joined us were both Asian and didn’t appear to speak much English. But the food we were served was hot and nourishing, thick frugal soups and cuts of cold meat and, of course, fish in all sizes and shapes. I’d always preferred white fish, the taste of which paradoxically wasn’t ‘fishy’. Herring, sardines and mackerel were definitely out. The captain enjoyed his ‘fishy’ tasting fish, however, so I often had to resort to dipping large chunks of bread into my soup to give it more consistency and appease an appetite that the sea air had done little to moderate.

At night, when few of the crew ventured on deck, we would often spend a few hours gazing at the moon, the gazillions of stars now revealed to us in all their glory and the immensity of the sea, swaddled in whatever warm
clothing we could find in our sparse luggage. The utter silence of the night was awesome as it enveloped us in its heavy cloak, with the chuff-chuff of the boat’s engines just a background punctuation. It was like being on another planet, a world of water, a world where only we belonged.

Shortly after he had picked us up, the captain had suggested I continue to keep my long blonde hair concealed inside my baseball cap so as not to inadvertently provoke members of the crew who were unaccustomed to having a woman on board. I’d tried to do so, but my unruly locks would keep spilling out so Chey suggested we cut it.

My initial reaction was one of horror.

As a child, it had taken forever for me to grow my hair, and when I’d finally managed to get it long enough it had been an occasion for pride and triumph. After my parents’ death, when I was taken in by my aunt, one of her first diktats was to have my hair cut considerably shorter to make my upkeep easier. I had protested in vain, but had no choice in the matter. I was in mourning for months. Since leaving my aunt’s house, I had always worn it long, even if the teachers at the ballet school complained of the time and effort it took to keep it under control when the corps de ballet all had to appear with matching chignons.

But the captain and Chey were right. We were carving ourselves new identities, and our future safety might depend on this.

And so, one night in the cabin, Chey tenderly cut my hair until I looked like a page boy. It was disconcerting and I felt terribly self-conscious every time I looked at myself in the mirror, but then I began to like it. Without the untamed tangle of pale locks, my features seemed more pronounced,
my cheekbones sharper, my eyes wider. A more ‘gamine’ version of the woman I had always been.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Chey once he had completed the task.

‘You look beautiful,’ he said. ‘And, after all, it’s still you, isn’t it? Just another side of you. You’ll get used to it and, when we get to our destination and settle down somewhere, you can always grow it out again, can’t you?’

‘I suppose so . . .’ I replied, gazing at the new Luba in the small, stained mirror above the cabin’s sink.

The following evening, as I was undressing with my back to Chey and about to slip into the old tracksuit I wore to bed on the ship, I realised that the regular sound of Chey brushing his teeth behind me had ceased. I turned round.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed just looking at me, pensive, dreamy.

‘What is it?’ I asked him. He was still holding his toothbrush in one hand, but had wiped his mouth with a towel now held in the other.

‘With that short hair you now have, your silhouette, naked from the back I was thinking you looked a little like a boy,’ he said.

‘Do you?’

‘Hmm . . .’

I had a ballet dancer’s shape. Long but strong legs, narrow hips and a round perfect circle arse and wide shoulders, a body trained and moulded by years of training and practice.

‘You like it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I didn’t know you were into boys . . .’

‘I could gladly make an exception.’

‘You wonderful pervert.’

I shook my backside in a parody of all the bad strippers I had come across in my previous journeys.

‘Oh yes, I could most certainly fuck that,’ Chey remarked.

His arm shot forward and the flat of his hand firmly slapped against my arse. He had meant it to be playful, but the cabin was so small that his proximity and the impact proved stronger than he’d wished and it stung.

I winced.

‘Ouch . . .’

Chey smiled. ‘That’s what happens to bad boys when they misbehave. They get spanked.’

I turned up my nose in a pretend sulk.

‘Oh, come here. Let me kiss it better.’

I was barely a step away and backed up to him. My buttock, probably now with the faint red imprint of his hand well in evidence across my natural pallor, on a level with his lips.

‘Yes, kiss me. Better.’

His lips were like a balm, soft as velvet and full of warmth.

He kissed my arse cheek with total reverence, like a penitent kneeling for forgiveness or confession. We were frozen in time, like statues, despite the lack of heating in the cabin, me naked and Chey just wearing a grey T-shirt.

After an eternity, his lips detached themselves from my skin and his hands gripped both of my cheeks and spread me open. Next, his tongue was inside me.