Suzie and the Monsters (4 page)

Up in her flat at last, we strip each other while kissing in the hallway, and then she pulls me into her bedroom and pushes me onto the bed, practically diving between my thighs to attack my pussy with amateur enthusiasm. I lie back, laughing quietly, and enjoy the building tension. After a few minutes she moves round into a 69 position so that we’re both eating each other out, and it’s not long before she’s coming. She rolls over to lie beside me. ‘Wow. Thanks. That was great,’ she says, and kisses me. ‘How was it for you?’

How was what for me? Being wound up and not released? I roll over on top of her, and she looks a little alarmed. ‘It was great,’ I lie, ‘but there’s one more thing you can do that will make tonight perfect.’

‘What?’

‘I want you to imagine that you’re on a tropical island beach, in the Seychelles perhaps, you and your lover alone with all the time in the world, your every need catered for, nothing to do but make love, the waves caressing the shore, the moon chasing the night, the stars singing of love, of perfect happiness...’

She is lost. I search the house for plasters and cotton wool, and bring these to the bedroom along with a bowl of water and a roll of toilet paper.

‘Nothing can hurt you,’ I whisper in Louise’s ear, and bite into her shoulder, deeper than usual. Her blood escapes forcefully into my mouth and I drink quickly, thirstily, driven in part by the anger of sexual frustration, but I don’t take too much. I press the wound closed until the blood stops trickling out, then clean her shoulder and put a plaster over the bite mark. ‘It was a silly accident,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing to worry about. Now go to sleep.’

I pull the covers over her, get dressed, and walk home, Louise’s blood a warm fire in my veins.

A Day Of Rest (Sunday)

On Sunday afternoon there’s a different guard standing watch over the fortress so I return home and spend the day catching up on housework. Washing and ironing make me feel human, whereas sorting through the junk mail makes me feel like an alien, so many bright colours advertising food I can never eat and clothes I wouldn’t be caught dead in, let alone undead. Finally, with the few important bits of paper filed away and the rest merrily shredded, I open the Château Hosanna I’ve been saving for a rainy day, or a lonely evening anyway, and slide Razor Blade Smile into the DVD player. An hour later, watching the gorgeous Eileen Daly ravishing Heidi James, I text Alia. ‘I need a real woman!’

‘Sorry, babe!’ she replies after a while. I sigh miserably. Alia’s in a long-term relationship, and her girlfriend really hates me.

‘I told you you knew fuck all about vampires,’ I say with Lilith as the film ends.

Money Matters (Monday)

On Monday morning, severely hungover, I punish my self-pity with a ten kilometre run along the old railway line and through the woods, ending up as usual however at Dan and DeCarlo, my favourite coffee shop. I take my coffee, loaded with sugar, outside where I sit on a wall, enjoying the cool sunlight and meditating.

Then I go shopping.

*

The girl in the lift is dressed in a dark navy blue Jaeger suit with a white shirt, and is perched on navy blue leather Tribute sandals, the high-heeled version of course. Her glasses make her look a little older than she usually looks, and in truth a little bit more normal too. There’s nothing to suggest that she doesn’t belong in the heart of the city’s financial district. As the lift starts to slow its ascent, she pulls an extravagant green and purple woollen scarf from the plain white shopping bag she carries and coils it untidily about her neck.

The doors slide open and she strides confidently over to Reception, smiling warmly at the blonde twenty-something receptionist as if they’ve been friends for years. ‘Hi,’ she says brightly, and continues effusively, ‘My name’s Suzie Kew. I’m studying economics over the road. My final year dissertation is on the role of naked short selling in the financial collapse of the banking sector in 2008. I’d love to talk to someone here, get an inside opinion on the recent increase of settlement failures in exchange-traded funds.’

The receptionist, ‘Chris’ according to her name badge, stares at me in complete bafflement. I’m too far outside her comfort zone, an alien in her world of predictable clients. It doesn’t help that my eyes are dazzling her a little, distracting her. ‘Everyone’s at lunch,’ she says eventually.

‘That’s fine, I brought something to read.’ Before she can ask any questions, I stride over to waiting area and choose a comfortable leather chair with a decent view of the lift and the main corridor leading to the offices. The angle and the reflections make it difficult to see anything through the glass walls, but it’s the best I can do. I settle into the chair, returning my ridiculous scarf to the bag and taking out the latest edition of Cosmo. ‘Embrace the hula trend,’ it says, and looking at the pictures I have to agree. My idea of lunch is to walk into a restaurant, order a Hawaiian, and get an Aloha girl delivered to my table for an hour or three of fun... If only!

Keeping half an eye on the lift, I’m thrilled to see my man arriving with two colleagues, all dressed sharply in tailored suits and laughing about... Angry Birds, I think. He glances at me briefly as he walks past, but without recognition or curiosity.

We crossed paths once before, very briefly, in January, and even I don’t really remember it. I was taking photos with my iPhone of everyone in Comatoes and the other clubs around there, while flirting and giggling and generally acting drunk, dressed as if for a hen night — which, incidentally, turns out to be an effective way to find men who’ll try to take advantage of an innocent young girl like me.

In amongst all those photos was one of Alex Graham. He’s a handsome devil.

Jessie must have thought so too. On Friday 16th December last year, the last day of term and cause therefore for much partying by the students before heading home to their parents’ places for Christmas, Jessie and her friends went out on the town to get laid. They had started at the same club where I met Cleo, and like us had moved on to Comatoes, where they had all got lucky, or so Jessie’s friends assumed. One of them had at least been able to pick out Alex from my large collection of photos, although it was a tentative identification at best.

From then on, her Facebook page shows nothing but Christmas and New Year greetings from friends mixed with puzzled queries about her silence. It was only on Sunday morning, when she failed to get off the plane in Toronto, that her parents grew worried enough to start burning the phone lines, demanding action from the College and the British police, and flying over to spend Christmas in London in a three-star hotel.

To be fair, the police did their job as well as could be expected, but by the time they identified who Jessie’s closest friends were and got hold of them, and eventually determined that her last known location was Comatoes, Christmas was past and all CCTV recordings of the club that night were long gone.

Once the students started returning in January, Jessie’s parents were able to talk to her friends for themselves, discovering nothing new, and their forlorn hope that Jessie herself might reappear from some wild holiday tryst was dashed. The police investigation had dried up also, so they decided at last to return home to Canada, having contracted Alia to continue the search for their lost daughter.

Near the end of the lunch hour, a woman, short dark hair with a slight curl, early forties but with a fine figure that catches my attention immediately, crosses from the lift to a small office directly behind Reception, casting a curious look in my direction. Her charcoal trouser suit is nothing special, but it fits her so well it could almost be bespoke. I watch the office door, hoping to see her again, so I’m thrilled when she emerges only seconds later, without handbag, a name badge declaring her to be ‘Norma’.

She interrogates Chris, who looks flustered and guilty, glancing at me briefly. I put my magazine away. With Norma stationary and in profile, I am able to admire her well-toned body and study her black patent courts with three-inch heels. Again nothing special, but she’s completely at ease in them. As she turns and walks towards me, my eyes work their way slowly up to meet hers.

‘I like your shoes,’ I say, before she can open her mouth. This makes her look at mine, and her eyes widen. ‘Trust me,’ I go on, not giving her a chance to speak, ‘they’re worth every penny.’ She nods thoughtfully, but suddenly doesn’t know what to say to me.

I lean forward, as if speaking in confidence to a friend, although I don’t bother to lower my voice. ‘Now I’m not saying that just because they’re Yves Saint Laurent. The good thing about designer shoes is that they are made with superior technologies, materials and workmanship, but designers are often so focussed on the visual impact that they sacrifice the essential function of the shoes. Watch!’ I stand up gracefully, then do a kind of reverse catwalk, walking over to the lift with the detached elegance of a professional model, pirouetting to present myself to my audience of two for a second, then walk back and return to my seat. ‘Now, be honest, was your first thought, “God I want her shoes”? Or was it, “God I want her body”?’ Her cheeks are suddenly red with embarrassment. Before she can answer, I say, ‘There’s no need to answer that, and anyway you have a fantastic body. I bet you do a five-k run every morning before breakfast.’

‘Except Sundays.’

‘I usually skip Saturdays myself. But my point is that a good pair of shoes should not distract from the woman who wears them. My first thought when I saw you was, “Wow, great body.” My second was, “Now there’s a woman who knows how to walk in stilettos.” And that’s why I like your shoes.’ I give her a smile full of the warmth of two comrades taking on the world together. I’m aware that Chris has forgotten her hostility, and is leaning across the reception desk to hear me better. ‘But you can do better.’ I bend down to undo my ankle straps and hold the shoes out to her. ‘You look about a size smaller than me, but give them a try.’

I can see that she wants to escape from me, or to take control over the conversation somehow, but there’s also that ‘it won’t hurt to try them...’ and that’s what wins out after a few tortured heart-beats. Slipping off her court shoes, Norma takes the Tributes and reverently places them on her feet, Cinderella being presented with two glass slippers. Then she glides across the floor, adjusting easily to the extra height and platforms, and there is a new sense of self-awareness about her that makes me want her very badly.

‘I see what you mean,’ she says, returning them to me.

‘Can I try them please,’ asks Chris, shyly, still behind the desk.

‘Of course,’ I reply, and for a couple of minutes Norma and I watch her walking around. Her feet are also a size too small, and she doesn’t have the same grace as Norma, but it’s clear that she’s in love. It is with considerable reluctance that she returns them to me.

‘Listen,’ I say to them as I return my feet to their home, ‘I know this is a really awkward thing to ask, but if I could have a five minute chat with one of the day traders, it would be great for my thesis.’

Norma hesitates, then nods. ‘I’ll see if someone can spare a minute. What was your name again, please?’

‘Suzie Kew. K-E-W.’

She looks amused. ‘I like the way you walk, Susie Q.’

*

London is, and always has been, home to a large homeless population. Despite the work of charities and shelters, there are many people sleeping rough on the streets. On the night of Jessie’s disappearance the police received an emergency call from a man saying he was being harassed by a vagrant saying there was a woman in trouble of some sort. The follow-up report states that a patrol car was on the scene ten minutes later, that the vagrant, named only as Freddie, claimed that a girl had been raped and left unconscious, but that on further investigation no one was found, nor any indication of a struggle. Attached to the report is a brief hand-written note explaining that Freddie has schizophrenia and difficulty distinguishing fact from paranoid fantasy.

The location of the supposed assault is less than half a kilometre from Comatoes. When I finally managed to track down Freddie, I found that his recollection of the event was very confused, even under hypnosis. However, his reaction when shown photos of Jessie and Alex was unquestionable.

Unfortunately, now that I was looking for Alex, not knowing his name or anything, he was nowhere to be seen. I resorted to showing his photo around at the clubs, with diminishing optimism, until two weeks ago when I struck gold. A party of secretaries having an after-work drink.

‘Ooh, I know him’ said Emily, a pretty brunette.

‘You do?’ I went from severely depressed to thrilled in the space of a heartbeat.

‘Yeah. Well, I don’t know his name or anything, but he works in our building somewhere.’

‘Let’s see,’ her friend Caroline said, grabbing the phone. ‘Oh, him!’ She blushed. ‘I think his name’s Alex.’ Suddenly they were all grabbing the phone and laughing about Caroline’s obvious crush.

‘Great!’ I interrupted, retrieving my iPhone. ‘And where do you ladies work?’

‘Tower 42,’ they chorused.

Tower 42 is huge, until three years ago the tallest building in the City of London, with forty seven floors. Alia took on the task of staking out the place, watching for Alex, tracking him down eventually to these very offices, while I continued watching for him at Comatoes and other haunts popular with City types, but without result.

But perseverance and a healthy dose of luck have paid out, bringing me again face to face with my quarry.

‘Hi! My name’s Suzie,’ I say brightly, and smiling warmly I stretch my hand out.

A little startled, he hesitates for a moment before shaking it. ‘Alex Graham,’ he says. ‘How can I help you, Miss Kew?’

I laugh, embarrassed. ‘Please call me Suzie. Miss Kew sounds, I don’t know, just so old. Like a schoolteacher. Actually, one of my aunts is Miss Kew and she’s, like, forty or something.’ I roll my eyes at the absurdity of age. He’s watching me with a bemused expression. ‘Yeah, anyway, I’m doing Economics at the LSE and my final year dissertation is on naked —’