Last Rites (9 page)

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘You know what I mean. There are plenty of other teachers out there looking for work. Why not go back to the school where you were teaching?’

He cut her short.

‘So your suggestion is that I return to the place where the little fuckers who almost killed me still go? Let them laugh at me every fucking day because they’ve got away with almost killing me? Cheers, Natalie.’

She exhaled wearily and opened her mouth to speak again but he cut in.

‘I can’t do it, Nat,’ he breathed. ‘I just can’t.’

She shook her head.

‘And what about you?’ he asked.‘What does the future hold for you?’

‘Does it matter? You’re not going to be around to see me, are you? Not if your grand plan works.’

Mason wasn’t slow to catch the scorn in her tone.

‘Do you blame me for wanting to get away from here after what happened?’ he challenged. ‘I want to get out of London, put this whole fucking episode behind me and start again and all you can suggest is that I stay as I was before.’

‘It’s a big step, Pete. I hope you’re ready for it.’

‘Nearly getting killed was a pretty big step too.’ She nodded and sipped some more wine.

For long moments they sat in silence, gazing across the table at each other then Natalie looked around at the dirty plates and the empty cartons of food.

‘I’d better help you tidy up. I can’t come round here, eat and drink and then just go home, can I?’ she intoned.

‘Leave it. I’ll do it in the morning. It’ll give me something to do while I wait for my job applications to be answered, won’t it?’

‘I’ll finish this then I’d better go,’ she told him, sipping more from the glass.

‘Stay for a while. I’ll make coffee.’ He got to his feet then turned and looked around at her. ‘Unless you’ve got somewhere to get to in a hurry. Someone to see.’

‘Like who?’

‘Another bloke?’

‘You know I haven’t got anyone to see, Pete.’

Mason filled the kettle with water then spooned some coffee into two mugs he retrieved from the wooden mug tree on the worktop.

‘There must have been other blokes since we split up,’ he mused. ‘I mean, you’re a good-looking woman, Nat.’

‘And you’re still full of shit.’

‘I’m trying to pay you a compliment,’ he grinned. ‘So, come on, tell me. Have there been other blokes?’

‘Do you want the gory details?’

‘Why not?’

‘All right, there’ve been three. Two one-night stands and one big mistake that passed for a relationship and finished about seven months ago.What about you? There must have been other women.You had a roving eye even when we were married.’

‘I resent that accusation,’ he smiled.

‘It’s true.’

‘I never cheated on you, Nat.’

‘I didn’t say you did. I just said you had a roving eye.’

Mason shrugged then poured hot water onto the instant coffee, stirring slowly.

‘There’s been no one else,’ he sighed. ‘If I couldn’t make love to you after Chloe died what makes you think I could do it with anyone else? I wasn’t interested in you. I wasn’t interested in anyone.’

He carried the cups to the table and stood close to Natalie who looked up at him.

‘Sorry I’ve got no milk. Shall we sit in the living room?’ he offered. ‘It’s more comfortable.’

She hesitated a moment then got to her feet and followed him through into the other room. Mason seated himself on one end of the sofa and watched as Natalie took her place at the other end.

‘I won’t bite,’ he told her. ‘Not unless you want me to.’ She held his gaze then reached for her coffee and took a sip.

‘What’s this all about, Pete?’ Natalie asked, wearily. ‘All the small talk? The bullshit? This?’ She waved a hand back and forth in the air, designed to encompass both of them. ‘Why now?’

‘We’re only talking, Nat. Where’s the problem?’

‘We’re talking now, Pete. When we were married we never did. Not about what mattered anyway.’

‘If you mean about Chloe.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she interrupted. ‘And about us. How our sex life died too. I know it was only natural after a loss like that but we needed that closeness, Pete. We needed each other and you never came near me. Not for two years after she died. Do you wonder that we split up? You weren’t there for me when I needed you most. In every sense.’

‘So a decent fuck would have kept you happy?’ he said, venomously. ‘That would have saved our marriage?’

‘But you accepted that distance between us so easily. It was as if you gave up. Just like you gave up on Chloe.’

‘I loved her more than I thought it was possible to love anyone,’ Mason said through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t ever say I gave up on her because I didn’t. There was nothing I could do. Nothing
we
could do. I wasn’t going to sit around and watch her die.’

‘But you let me, didn’t you?’

‘I couldn’t come to the hospital. I didn’t want to see her hooked up to those fucking tubes, her life draining away a bit more every day.’

‘Neither did I, Pete but I still did it. I went for Chloe’s sake. You stayed away for
your
sake, you selfish bastard.’

‘Perhaps I did,’ he snapped. ‘I couldn’t face her. I couldn’t deal with the questions. With
her
questions. She asked me once if she was going to die. What was I supposed to do? Lie to her? Tell her that everything was going to be fine when I knew it wasn’t going to be?’ He shook his head.

‘But you expected me to be there for her.You knew I’d have to answer her questions.’

Mason lowered his gaze.

‘And that was when you lost respect for me?’ he murmured. ‘That was the beginning of us splitting up, wasn’t it?’

‘That and your drinking. You were happier with a bottle in your hand than you were with me.’

‘It was the only way I could cope, Natalie.’

‘By downing a bottle of vodka a night. Very helpful, Pete.’

‘It helped me,’ he snarled. ‘I didn’t know how else to cope with what was happening to our daughter or to us. And I’m sorry. Don’t you think that a day goes by I don’t think about her and want her back? Want the three of us together again? But that’s not going to happen, is it? That was in the past. Everything’s changed and it’s not going to get any better.’

‘And that’s why you’re running away.’

Mason didn’t answer.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit late to be making a fresh start, Pete?’ she continued.

‘There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’

He reached for his coffee and sipped it. When he looked at Natalie again he saw something behind her eyes. A look that he recognised from another time. A look of disdain that bordered on contempt.

‘I’d better go,’ she said, quietly.

When she got to her feet he didn’t try to stop her.

19

Walston, Buckinghamshire

Amy Coulson shuddered at the touch of warm female flesh on either side of her. In the gloom of the room every feeling and sensation seemed heightened.The intoxicating scent of perfume, freshly washed hair and the perspiration that came from such intense and pleasurable physical exertion filled her nostrils as surely as if it was a narcotic.

She closed her eyes as she felt gentle feminine hands brushing over her skin. Warm breath washed over both her ears as the two figures with her on the bed moved closer, kissing and nibbling at the sensitive appendages. They moved in perfect unison, as if they belonged to one single entity.

Amy felt hands on her breasts, one pushing urgently beneath her white vest top and enveloping the plump globe. Slender fingers squeezed her erect nipples and she arched her back as the feelings already running through her body intensified.

Around the large bed she sensed rather than saw the other figures moving closer, anxious to watch the spectacle before them and this only increased her excitement. Amy turned first one way then the other and, both times, she was met by slippery, tender lips that she kissed enthusiastically. Female lips that pressed against her own before pushing soft tongues into her mouth and against the hard white edges of her teeth.

She knew that the girls on either side of her were barely a year older than she was. Seventeen or eighteen but no more.

As were the other figures gathered around the bed. The figures that watched so intently in virtual silence, keen to be closer to what lay before them, revelling in it. Drinking it in. But Amy didn’t care about that. All that concerned her were the electric jolts of pleasure coursing through her body, each one growing more intense.

She felt wonderfully light-headed.As if she was floating. She knew that the drink she’d consumed and the drugs she’d taken were helping to create this feeling but more than anything, it was the undiluted physical pleasure she felt that was the most intoxicating part of the cocktail. She let out a long, low sigh of desire and fixed her own mouth to the one on her left, kissing intently as she felt two hands now roving wantonly over her breasts and stomach.

One of the hands then slid lower, towards the top of her tiny panties, gliding over the soft material to probe at her mound and the heat between her legs. She kissed more deeply, her eyes tightly shut as she felt more lips on her neck and she turned to repay this latest delight. Amy felt another hot and eager mouth only a fraction from her face and she pushed her tongue out to greet it. She felt it enveloped by this new and welcoming cavern and she kissed its owner as passionately as she’d kissed the first. She felt her own tongue engulfed by the lips and mouth of the girl to her left and she responded fiercely as the searching hands to her right continued to slide across her stomach and up beneath her top, again toying with her stiff nipples, drawing them out until they felt as if they would burst with the pleasure and expertise of the touch.

All around the bed the watching figures drew closer.

Amy broke the kiss momentarily but only to gasp her pleasure. She returned to it seconds later, a thin silver thread of saliva clinging to her bottom lip and dangling from it like filament. As she drew her head back once again one of the probing tongues licked the saliva away. Amy arched her back as she felt the questing hands pulling agitatedly at her top, trying to free her sensitive breasts from beneath the material.

Smiling, Amy sat up momentarily, pulling the top off herself and throwing it to one side. She lay back down, welcoming the attention now lavished upon her swollen and exposed nipples. One soft, expert mouth worked on each of the hardened buds, tongues flicking gently back and forth while hands continued to stroke across her panties and also up and down the inside of her thighs. They left gleaming trails of saliva in their wake, one of them licking lower to the sensitive area at the top of her thighs then down the inside of the slender leg until they reached her calf. Amy bent her leg as she felt it being gently lifted and then she gasped again as she felt the hot mouth close over her little toe. She smiled as the tongue pushed between her toes then its owner sucked each of the digits in turn, finishing with her big toe.

Amy murmured something unintelligible. The expression of a feeling of such ecstasy that it had no recognisable exhortation.And while the mouth continued to trace outlines up and down the sole and arch of her foot, stopping occasionally to return to her toes, the girl on the other side of her also sank lower, her own probing tongue flicking up towards the already slick gusset of Amy’s panties. The questing tongue flicked across the material briefly then poked beneath it to taste Amy’s wet and swollen cleft. Again she let out a groan of pleasure and lifted her bottom to allow her panties to be pulled off. Naked, she lay on her back, legs wide, her mouth open slightly, her tongue resting on her bottom lip.

The two tongues met between her legs in an explosion of pleasure and Amy couldn’t contain herself any longer. The feelings were building up inside her more intensely than she’d ever felt before in her life. Like water smashing against a crumbling dam. She had no way to hold these feelings back and she had no wish to. As one tongue lapped frenziedly at her throbbing clitoris, the other probed deeply into her soaking depths, tracing the outline of her vaginal lips lovingly and expertly.

Amy felt fingers being pushed between her slick and puffy lips as the motion of the two tongues increased.

There was a grunt of pleasure from somewhere in the darkness but it didn’t come from Amy. Not this time.

The figures around the bed moved nearer but Amy didn’t care. Her pleasure was reaching heights she’d never experienced before. She pressed her head into the pillow, arched her back and prepared to surrender to the feelings roaring through her quivering body. She felt the first unmistakable and unstoppable waves of her climax begin to jolt her body.

Someone close to the bed muttered something but Amy didn’t hear what it was. Even if she had it wouldn’t have mattered to her. Nothing did for now.

She didn’t even mind the cameras pointed at her.

20

North London

‘No, this isn’t open to negotiation. I’m not coming back.’

Mason held the phone against his ear and stood gazing out of the sitting-room window as he spoke. Below him, the late afternoon traffic was clogged in the street, the pavement busy with people. Mason watched indifferently, puffing slowly on the cigarette he’d lit before making the call.

‘I know as headmaster you’re responsible for your staff but were you really expecting me back at the school after what’s happened?’ he continued.

The voice at the other end of the line was hesitant but finally said something almost apologetically.

‘I can’t believe you expected me back,’ Mason declared. ‘Not in a month, six months or a year.’

The voice on the other end was silent for a moment. ‘You won’t have any trouble finding someone to take my place,’ Mason said. ‘Perhaps it’ll be someone who’ll remember to mind their own business. Let the little bastards get on with things and not interfere.’

The caller enquired about the police investigation.