Letters from Yelena (24 page)

She suddenly looked suspicious. ‘I am a little surprised that a writer his age has a secretary. Are you a big fan of his work then as well?’

‘Very much so, however much other people love his work, I feel it cannot compare to how important it is to me.’

Suddenly, I was speaking as Yelena. Almost pleading that she understood how essential you were to me, begging with her not to steal you from me. ‘It cuts both ways though,’ I
continued. ‘He asks me to read his work while it is still in the early stages and then give my opinion on it. I’m lucky, because I don’t believe that he does that with anyone
else.’

‘You are lucky,’ she replied. ‘And I understand how you feel about him too.’

Her eyes levelled into mine, with a glint that I suddenly found compelling.

‘I can see why Noah wanted to meet with you though,’ I said. ‘I can already see that you share the same empathic perspective that he has, that you too have that sensitivity. He
is obviously susceptible to the charms of young and beautiful women. But what man in his position wouldn’t be?’

She quickly looked up at me, surprised by this sudden change in tack. I felt a sense of triumph, and wondered if I had just outmanoeuvred her. But then her expression brightened, and she seemed
to feign a blush.

She smiled. ‘You’re very kind, and I think that you might be right. Why else would he choose you for a secretary? He clearly has a taste for women like us.’

The rain outside had ceased. A slight sheen was rising from the concrete. The café, though still half empty, now felt a little humid.

‘And who can blame him?’ I asked. Her eyes met mine. I sensed that something in her manner had shifted. She was suddenly no longer practical, concerned. Her body was responding to me
in a different way.

It was then that I remembered the details of the photos I had so rabidly consumed. I realised that if I had been able to draw Catherine to this point, why wouldn’t
I
be able to
seduce her too? The logic of this decision seems mad now – she had gone there to meet you – but at that moment my reasoning seemed strong and clear. If I were to seduce Catherine, I
would finally get to see exactly what it was about her that you had found so attractive. And then, and only then, could I fully replace her.

‘The rain has stopped,’ I said. ‘But shall we get another coffee?’ Her lips parted, and I remembered that in the photos they had been plump, red, eager to ease into a
smile.

‘Why not?’ she said.

I waved the waitress over to our table. As she poured out the dark, thick coffee, I felt C’s eyes analyse me.

The next time I was consciously aware of what I was doing, was when we arrived at C’s flat. It was late afternoon by then, and the world seemed to be giving off a porous fragrance.

Her  flat was  small  and  artfully  cluttered.  I  remember looking for sculptures, and feeling relieved after observing a couple, but I felt unsettled by the
red and black Francis Bacon prints on the wall, the facial features on each clouded and indistinct, lacking any clarity. They seemed to surge towards me and taunt me. I remember the precise way she
placed a glass of white wine beside me as we sat in her drawing room. The way that, after many searching and purely cosmetic conversations, she stopped perching on the edge of the couch and moved
to sit next to me, placing her hand around my neck. I had never seen a woman up close like this before, never seen a painted mouth open for me in such a sensuous manner, and yet I was aware I had
constructed this situation myself.

I suddenly found her presence powerfully involving and I kissed her with real tenderness. I felt a wave of passion pass over me. Closing my eyes I could see your body, clasped against hers as
mine now was. I unbuttoned her shirt, which revealed a shaft of her ivory white chest. As she leant back on the couch I could see your mouth closing on the swell of her breast, which rose to a
tight peak. I kissed her, searching for your essence within her. Somehow I was able to sense it, distant and elusive. It existed in the root of her passion, suddenly awakened as I circled her waist
with gentle and yet insistent fingers, before eventually finding the source of her pleasure. I could almost feel your presence when her body broke open, when her shirt fell from her slim shoulders.
I wondered if I was touching her in the exact same way that she had touched you, but that wondering soon turned into an urgent need to make sure I was. I imagined that it was your hands that passed
around her neck, that gathered her from the shoulder blades. Your hands that implored her to turn over, and your eyes that took in the pinched quality of her flesh, the smooth S shape of her back.
In imagining it was your lips that explored the texture of her neck, it seemed to become so.

The hands that unbuttoned my blouse were gentle, and yet accommodating too. When our bodies finally merged, it was your name preying upon my lips, the thought of your back and body that consumed
me as we pressed against each other. I sought you in her tender and shivering flesh, chased you, with fingers and lips, across the plane of her navel. Though it was C and I having sex, I was
acutely aware it was not only the two of us that were present. Your ghost encircled us, eased our fluttering bodies together. Her thighs opened, wanting you to ease inside her, and yet I met that
welcome with a tender embrace. She came in my arms, overwhelmed by my insistence to find you within her. As she caught her breath we held each other gently, and I found you again in the nape of her
neck, the scent in her hair. You embodied me, your words scrolling across my consciousness as I kissed her neck, my teeth drawing from her lips the exact reaction you had strived so hard to capture
in your letters. As I searched for those precise sounds her body responded – questioning and yet plaintive. I could sense her wondering what was driving this fervent exploration, but then the
sound of her pleasure turned to a plea for mercy as I bit her neck. Suddenly your description seemed to exist in another world, as here there was only the remonstrating expression of a beguiling
woman.‘You drew blood,’ she whispered, her hand clasping against her neck. Gathering her thick, dark hair in my hands I moved to soften her anger, kissing her mouth, my fingers urging
the tensed muscles in her back to relax. Her reaction was wordless, a brief bodily rearrangement. We began to move in rhythm again, and I felt your presence knife down my arms and into my fingers
as I began to scratch her flesh. How exactly had you done it again? For a moment her body broke upon, her pleasure rising to another crescendo. I felt so exhilarated by the thought of her
responding to my scratches just as she had done to yours. I was capturing it all. My eyes, I knew, held no tenderness now. They studied her for the times I would replicate these exact sounds, the
exact myriad collapses of flesh. Her eyes met mine, retracted at the studious expression glazing my face. ‘Don’t scratch me,’ she ordered, the end of the sentence breaking the
erotic clamour of her insistence into something more suspicious. ‘You’re hurting me.’

But your presence was overwhelming me, so much so that I had no choice but to chase it through this woman’s retreating flesh. I had to make her come again. I had to hear the alteration in
the tone of her voice, the one you had rhapsodised over in potent cascades of letters. But her eyes were tightening now, ready to condemn. Whatever game she was playing with me now seemed to be
rapidly losing its charm. I was possessed, consumed by my craving to find you, and with it the physical relief I desperately craved. I knew my body would only be satisfied when my mind was. But our
bodies had lost our connection, her arms tightening to keep me apart from her rather than close. I needed to bring her to a climax again but she was preoccupied only with my pleasure – with
finishing it. I tried to throw her onto the bed but she slipped off me, her arm pinning me against the sheets. ‘Stop it. Let me kiss you.’

‘Lie down,’ I replied, soft and yet firm.

‘You’re hurting me,’ she whispered, clutching her hair in her fist and bunching her thighs against her chest. ‘Give me a moment.’

I had been so close to the final prize that I felt my body revolt in anger. It desperately wanted release, and yet I knew I had pushed this woman too far. ‘Lie down,’ she said.
‘Let me.’

But my hand swept hers from my breasts. ‘What’s wrong?’ she hissed.

‘You’re stopping me,’ I said. ‘You know what I’m trying to do and you won’t let me.’

She sat bolt upright, the colour suddenly vanishing from her cheeks. ‘What are you talking about? You’re scaring me now.’ She whipped the sheet around her breasts.
‘Perhaps you should leave, Anna.’

‘So it’s not a game any more, when I come close to the prize? Is that how it works?’ The combative tone felt so jarring, given the recent tumult our bodies had both been
in.

‘The prize? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The tone became authoritative. ‘There’s something very wrong going on here.’

‘Wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong Catherine.You pretending to be someone else to try and get Noah back. Pretending to be this innocent C woman just to ensnare him again.
Isn’t that sick? Well you had your chance, and you disappeared from his life. He’s mine now, and I know how to keep him.’

‘I want you to leave,’ she said, grabbing her shirt and pushing her arms through it. ‘Right now.’

‘So you don’t deny it Catherine? You don’t deny that I’m right?’ My thighs were bunched against my body now but I felt coiled, ready for the confrontation.

Her voice dropped. ‘My name isn’t Catherine, Anna. It’s Cecilia. And I think this was a mistake. You need to leave.’

‘I’m not Anna, and you know it. And you’re not Cecilia either.’

‘You made it all up,’ she said, pushing her fingers through her hair. ‘Noah, the accident, you’re just some perverted… what are you?’

‘I’m his girlfriend, Catherine!’

She didn’t respond immediately. She moved over to the dresser and grabbed the purse that was sitting on it. Snapping it open she flashed me the ID card, housed in its transparent slip.
‘I’m Cecilia Marks,’ she hissed, jabbing at it with her finger. ‘And I have no idea what you’re talking about. I want you out of my house. Right now.’

I grabbed the purse from her as she started to sweep up my clothes, her movements heavy with disgust. I looked at the ID card. There, below her scrubbed face, now so different from the Catherine
in the photos were the words ‘Cecilia Marks.’ In desperation I flickered through the rest of the contents: store cards, credit cards, fluttering loyalty vouchers. All with the same name
printed on them.

The blood drained from my face. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I don’t care what you believe, Anna, or whoever you are. Get out!’ she screamed.

She threw my clothes at me. After a second’s pause I started to flail at them, pulling them onto my body as I staggered to the door. Suddenly it all fell into place. The hair, the face.
The name. A knife-like pain tore through my head. What had

I done?

My journey home is a blank; I can only recall that it contained the metallic whir of the tube, and the peculiar yet by now familiar ringing in my head. Back at your house, I felt relieved to
have brought that confusing and exhilarating chapter to a close. Then I heard a noise – from your bedroom. I called out your name.

It was only when I had rounded the corner to your room that I saw you on your knees, beside your bed. Your arms were full of Catherine’s letters. Their exposure felt somehow indecent;
their sheer number overwhelming.

‘You’re back early,’ I said, my voice quivering.

‘Yelena.  What’s  been  going  on?  Why  are  my  private letters everywhere? And why is my email account open on the screen?
Yelena?’

‘I – I didn’t think you were going to be back for another three days.’

‘Jesus, what have you done to your hair? Yelena, what’s been going on?’

The pain in my head suddenly became too much to bear, and I collapsed onto you with a quiet sob. Finally I spoke. ‘I slept with someone else, because I wanted to keep you,’ I said,
my voice gradually rising.

Your arms suddenly stiffened, and you eased me off you. I looked up at you.

‘I came across your letters by accident, and I read them. All of them. Especially Catherine’s. I’m sorry Noah, I became so jealous. And I ended up checking all your emails and
I saw a flirtatious one from a woman called C, and I thought she was Catherine, trying to get you back.’

‘What Cee? I don’t remember any Cee,’ you said, clawing your hand through your hair.

‘And so pretending to be you I arranged to meet her. And then I turned up to confront her.’

‘And… did something happen? Did you sleep with her?’

Dumbly, I nodded. I looked up, to see you looking scared and confused.

‘Why?’

I loathed myself so much. I moved over to you, tried to hug you, tried to make sense of it all.

‘Noah, I’m so sorry. I’m sick,’ I said. You stepped away from me. Your eyes were not quite able to level at me.

‘I need you to get out of my house right now.’

Tears overwhelmed me, and a second later I was clambering down the hallway. I heard your voice behind me, beckoning me back in, needing all this madness to be explained. But my anguish, and fear
at what I had become propelled me out of the house. I tore open the front door and ran out into the street.

I had to get out of that house. Away from your voice, your presence, and all the awful implications that had now come with it. I ran to the end of the road and then left around the blind corner,
still with no idea of where to go. I rounded the corner too fast to see the small, black car that was tearing down the street. The startled expression of the young man at the wheel was all that was
visible to me as the car struck, and with a sickening jolt my body crumpled into it, my head striking the windscreen as I blacked out.

Yelena

Dear Noah,

Certain images from the crash scorched themselves on my memory. It took many months to piece them together and create a narrative.